Megadeth's Dave Mustaine reveals the haunting sick-bed confession that exposed a 'sinister' deception — Published: 20:34 BST, 6 September 2026 | Updated: 20:35 BST, 6 September 2026
Many of his earliest, most aggressively unhinged songs were fueled by what Dave Mustaine calls 'religious abuse' at the hands of his mother, who was a devout Jehovah's Witness until her death in 1990.
Forbidden from celebrating birthdays, accepting Christmas gifts, or even reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the Megadeth front man has said the experience ruined his childhood and alienated him from his peers.
As a result, he rebelled as a teenager, exploring black magic and the occult before finding fame as lead guitarist of Metallica.
Thrown out of that Grammy-winning band for his drug and alcohol abuse, he then went on to form Megadeth, performing hit songs including Symphony of Destruction and Holy Wars.
But now the 64-year-old rocker has claimed the religion was to blame for an even bigger family trauma – one that has haunted him since childhood and which will, tragically, never be resolved.
In his upcoming memoir, In My Darkest Hour, Mustaine, who also battled throat cancer in 2019, writes about growing up in a 'weird and dysfunctional household (I wouldn't even call it a home).'
The Megadeth front man has said growing up with a devout Jehovah's Witness as a mother ruined his childhood and alienated him from his peers
Mustaine with his daughter Electra, and his wife of 35 years, Pam
He says he always suspected that the woman who raised him, Emily Marie Mustaine, was not his mother at all, but that one of his sisters had committed the cardinal sin of getting pregnant as an unwed teenager.
'Maybe,' he writes in the memoir, 'out of embarrassment and religious and social pressure, they had "gone away" for a while (as people sometimes did in those days), and then turned the baby over to grandma to raise as her own. Grandma, in this case, being the woman I knew as my mother.'
He adds: 'Maybe the tumult had contributed to my father disappearing.'
His mother and violent alcoholic father got divorced when Mustaine was just four. Mustaine has talked in the past about how he lived in fear of his father's unpredictable and violent mood swings.
'Maybe,' he adds, 'it had led my mother into the insane vortex of religious zealotry.
'I can't fully explain why I felt this way, but I did. Sometimes I'd even dream about it.'