Megadeth's Dave Mustaine onstage at the Gibson Amphitheatre earlier… (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles…)
Dave Mustaine may be best known for fronting the thrash-metal band Megadeth, but he's lately implied an interest in a different kind of metal -- namely tinfoil, for folding into hats, out of an escalating and bizarre far-right paranoia.
The singer told an audience at a Singapore show last week that he believed President Obama secretly planned three recent shootings as a precedent to steal Americans' guns. "Back in my country, my president is trying to pass a gun ban," he said. "So he's staging all of these murders, like the Fast and Furious thing down at the border and Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there. And now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple."
The audience was reportedly perplexed by the rant, especially as Singapore wouldn't exactly be considered a five-star vacation destination by the NRA. The country has strict laws on gun ownership that are far more restrictive than America's.
Mustaine had previously come out as a full-fleged "birther" on libertarian conspiratory theorist Alex Jones' radio show, suggesting Obama's birth certificate is a fraud. He also praised then-candiate Rick Santorum in the Republican primary.
The rants don't seem to necessarily be hurting his band's popularity: Megadeth's latest, "Th1rt3en," topped the Billboard hard rock charts at its release last year.
He joins Ted Nugent among contemporary musicians openly trafficking in conspiracy theories. But then, maybe being kicked out of Metallica just before they got really famous will make you think the world's out to get you.
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