Hidden Treasures

Hidden Treasures is a compilation EP released on July 18, 1995 through Capitol Records. It gathers onto one disc the eight songs Megadeth recorded between 1987 and 1994 for film soundtracks and tribute albums, none of which had appeared on a studio record. The origins are scattered, but the sequence holds together. The three covers — Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” (cut for the film Shocker, and Nick Menza’s recording debut), Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” (for the tribute album Nativity in Black) and the Sex Pistols’ “Problems” — never simply retrace their originals; each is pulled toward Megadeth’s own riff angles and vocal bite. “Angry Again” came out of the Countdown to Extinction sessions, while “99 Ways to Die,” “Breakpoint,” “Go to Hell” and “Diadems” were each written for a different film. It is easy to file a rarities set under housekeeping, but three of these — “Angry Again,” “99 Ways to Die” and “Paranoid” — were nominated for the Best Metal Performance Grammy. Songs written between albums often show a band’s working hand most plainly, and these do. One note on editions: the version streaming and on the current Japanese CD runs to twelve tracks, adding “A Tout Le Monde” and three demos to the original eight, and the running order differs between the two.