Mustaine goes metal on Men's Wearhouse

Dave Mustaine, what happened to you, man?

It's been 30 years since you were kicked out of Metallica for your drinking, drugging and two-fisted debauchery and just as long since you sought metal revenge by forming thrash-metal mainstay Megadeth. You gave longhaired, denim-clad, disgruntled hesher teens around the world an avenue for aggression with albums like “Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good!,” “Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?” and “Countdown To Extinction.” Your band's very name railed against the system by mocking the term for a million deaths used by a '50s warhawk in his book about nuclear annihilation.

Now you're having online fights with Men's Wearhouse (MW) over gift cards? Gift cards, dude. How does a guy who spent a full adult lifetime wearing black shirts on stage end up arguing about anything with the company that produces inexpensive Jones New York business attire?

This is the state of Dave Mustaine these days, and old and somewhat-younger metal-heads alike breathed a deep sigh and tried not to cry into a poster of Megadeth mascot Vic Rattlehead when Mustaine took to his Facebook (FB) page after Christmas to thrash a bunch of customer service employees.

In a screed he addressed only to “Droogies” (because “A Clockwork Orange” references are so dark and metal when writing a glorified Yelp review), Mustaine takes five long paragraphs to explain how a Men's Wearhouse in Salt Lake City didn't deliver a gift card to his tour manager on time after salesmen guaranteed it.

Using vitriol he once reserved for targets like the military industrial complex, the United Nations and Tipper Gore, Mustaine took a dig at Men's Wearhouse founder George Zimmer and his televised promises. In Mustaine's heavy metal parking lot, however, Zimmer's just “the old geezer with the voice that sound like he has chain-smoked since he was a fetus; the one that espouses, 'I absolutely guarantee you’re gonna like the way you look,' or some manure like that, right?”

It gets a little bogged down in detail after that and, honestly, could have benefited from a guitar solo or at least a sweet bridge. The finish, however, is pure “Symphony of Destruction” Mustaine:

I really think that it sucks when people make false claims, that they don’t care to make good on a problem that is clearly their fault, and with all of the “ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE IT” crap I just had to say something. We are all living in very tight financial times right now, and like I said, you may not wear a suit for your job or for an event or occasion, but if you do, I would strongly recommend you wear someone else’s suits. Go to Jos. A Bank instead. I for one, will never set foot in a Men’s Warehouse, even for shelter from a blizzard.

Sick burn, or at least it would have been if both sides were handling this exchange like a quarrel at a Monsters Of Rock festival. Men's Wearhouse, unaware that the appropriate response is to throw something on stage or give Mustaine the finger from 30 rows back, tweeted Mustaine its mellow response on Tuesday:

@DaveMustaine Thx for reaching out on FB. We responded to your posts on your fan pages. We're here to help, email us at MWListens@tmw.com

"Dave, thanks for reaching out to us on Facebook," Joe of the Men's Wearhouse "social media team" wrote. "We apologize for the delay in receiving your gift card and agree that the delay is unacceptable. Customer satisfaction is our highest priority and we stand by our guarantee to deliver world-class customer service. So, we'd like to speak with you about a solution but are having some trouble reaching you since we last connected on 12/28. Please send your contact info to MWListens@tmw.com and our team will help you right away."

The exchange above suggests that the cranky old dude in this equation may not be the guy peddling Pronto Uomo no-iron shirts.

Mustaine is now 51 years old. He's had kind of a tough go of it since he cried after being kicked out of Metallica in that band's 2004 documentary “Some Kind Of Monster.” He was sued by Megadeth bassist and co-founder Dave Ellefson for $18.5 million in 2004 after Ellefson accused Mustaine of hoarding all the band's profits. The two reconciled and Ellefson rejoined the band in time for its “Big Four” tour with Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax a couple of years ago. Mustaine even reunited with Metallica for a one-off anniversary show in 2011.

Lately, though, he's drawn more attention for making statements against homosexuality and gay marriage, supporting former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's failed presidential campaign and, at a concert in Singapore in August, accusing President Barack Obama of "staging" shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in order to "pass a gun ban.”

Mustaine's always been a political creature and he wouldn't be the first person whose political pendulum has swung a bit since his youth, but the crankiness sounds a bit more cantankerous when it's coming from a long-haired talking head on a 24-hour news network. Strip it of all its political underpinnings, double-bass backing and metal aesthetic, and you just have another middle-aged dude grumbling about a store on his Facebook page. He's just couple of YouTube cat videos and uploaded “inspirational” photos away from being every other parent in America, and surly parents are just about the least metal thing there is.

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