Dave Mustaine’s New Memoir Will Discuss His 2019 Cancer Battle

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has recently been making the rounds to discuss the band’s final LP – 2026’s Megadeth – and their farewell tour. During a recent appearance on WAPL Mornings With Laura Lee & Cutter, Mustaine also explained that his upcoming 2027 memoir – In My Darkest Hour – will explore “what life was like” battling throat cancer in 2019.

What Dave Mustaine Said About His Upcoming Memoir

About halfway into the interview (posted to YouTube on Feb. 13), co-host Lee asked Mustaine about what In My Darkest Hour will discuss.

“The best way to summarize the book is it’s the medical process and then what life was like at that time, you know, and getting into the details,” Mustaine began.

He elaborated:

I would go and get radiation and, like, chemotherapy and then I would go to the studio and work. Some days, I would get to the studio and we’d play and I’d have to run outside and throw up and go back inside and play. And I lost a lot of weight, and fortunately for me, I had Dirk [Verbeuren, Megadeth’s drummer] there and [producer] Chris Rakestraw was there, and they were supportive and I got through it.

I mean, I wouldn’t wanna go through it again. I imagine that if I – I’m in remission right now — I’ve been for about six years — [and] I imagine [that] if anything happens again, I’m gonna have the same mentality about it because when I went in there, I thought, “I’m gonna kill cancer.” I was so pissed, ‘cause I used to always joke around [that] anything that got in my body would die. We caught it early and went through all of the treatment, but because I’m a singer, we had to do things totally different. We had to focus differently with the radiation, and if it would’ve been off by even a millimeter, you know, that’s it for Dave.

You can watch the full interview below:

Dave Mustaine Discusses His Upcoming Memoir + More (Feb. 13, 2026)

In My Darkest Hour follows Mustaine’s prior two books (2010’s Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir and 2020’s Rust In Peace: The Inside Story of the Megadeth Masterpiece). As Blabbermouth noted, the latest book will be co-written by New York Times journalist Joe Layden, who also worked on Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir in addition to late KISS guitarist Ace Frehley’s No Regrets: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Memoir from 2012.

In My Darkest Hour is set to release in September 2027 via De Capo, who describe it as follows:

From King of Metal Dave Mustaine, a powerful reflection on the harsh truths and raw realizations that can only come from confronting death.

Dave Mustaine is no stranger to pain and suffering. He battled demons all his life—including an alcoholic father, addiction, and black magic—and turned fifty-eight believing he’d survived the worst. But in 2019, Mustaine was forced to face the loss of his instantly recognizable voice and the disintegration of his musical talent. Diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue, his entire career—and possibly his life—was about to end.

For Mustaine, it was one more opportunity to fight like hell.

In My Darkest Hour takes readers from the treatment room to the studio as Mustaine chronicles how his diagnosis inspired him to take up the pen and guitar pick, going from radiation and chemotherapy appointments straight into hours-long recording sessions, resulting in Megadeth’s sixteenth studio album, ‘The Sick, The Dying…and the Dead!’ Along the way, Mustaine details how confronting his own mortality brought him closer to his family, taught him how to ask for help, strengthened his faith, and challenged the vulnerability of his art.

Filled with perseverance, hope, and the determination to never let the bastards grind you down, In My Darkest Hour is a masterful portrait of a Dave Mustaine that the world has yet to see, and serves as a moving reminder that even our most invincible heroes are human.

You can preorder it here.

READ MORE: What David Ellefson Likes and Dislikes About Megadeth’s Final Album

More About Mustaine’s Battle With Cancer

Back in June 2019, Loudwire reported on Mustaine’s throat cancer diagnosis (specifically, a squamous cell carcinoma on the base of his tongue) and subsequent cancellation of Megadeth’s 2019 tour. Several months later, Mustaine told Rolling Stone magazine, “I never settle for anything but complete success or, in this case, victory” as he vowed to defeat the illness in the wake of receiving positive test results following treatment.

In October of 2019, former bandmate David Ellefson confirmed that Mustaine had finished his cancer treatment, and in January of the next year, Mustaine himself told a London audience that he’s “100 percent free of cancer.”

About 10 years later, Mustaine elaborated on his ordeal by revealing that – as Loudwire wrote at the time – he “used marijuana to ease the side effects from 51 radiation treatments and nine chemotherapy sessions.”

Other Megadeth News

Last month, Mustaine sat down with Loudwire Nights’ Chuck Armstrong to discuss Megadeth’s farewell tour (which begins tonight, Feb. 15, in Victoria, British Columbia).

“We’re gonna go out on a bang and that’s what we’ve always wanted to do,” Mustaine said.

He also clarified: “We play better than a lot of the bands that are out on tour nowadays — not all of them, but we can hold our own against a lot of the bands that are out there and we mix our setlist up, so we’re always playing Megadeth’s catalog.”

Speaking of Megadeth, Mustaine told Armstrong that the lyrics to the last song (appropriately titled “The Last Note”) took a long time to be finalized because they didn’t know until “halfway through the record” that Megadeth would be their final album: “‘The Last Note’ actually had different lyrics before we talked about going out on top and not having the things that befall bands that keep them from maintaining their status as they go into that legacy stage of their career, if they’re so lucky.”

Earlier this month, Mustaine told NME that he’s concerned about the future of recent Grammy winner and rising star Yungblud.

Specifically, Mustaine was asked about the possibility of Yungblud single-handedly “carry[ing] the torch for a new generation of metal and rock fans,” to which he bluntly answered [via NME]:

Perhaps [that could happen]. But when you say somebody is working with everybody, that to me means they’ve reached a point where they need to either take a break, or find something else [to separate them from the pack] because you run the risk of your song sounding like the last person’s song, which then sounds like the last person’s song.

Going back to Megadeth’s farewell tour, they’ll be playing several dates in Canada before venturing over to Peru, Columbia, Chile, Mexico, Spain and numerous other places before returning to North America in September. Along the way, they’ll be sharing the stage with Anthrax, Exodus and/or Iron Maiden.

Of course, you can see all of Megadeth’s upcoming tour dates – and grab tickets – here.

So, will you be reading In My Darkest Hour when it arrives next year? Let us know!