The stage was lit, the amps humming, the road crew long gone — every visual cue said any minute now. Five minutes became ten. Ten became twenty, then thirty, then sixty. Around me the crowd was still cheering every time a shadow crossed the stage, still certain the band was about to walk out. I was just as certain. I didn’t yet know how wrong that certainty was.
Megadeth got into my head years before I got into metal. I remember seeing the name on a t-shirt long before I knew what kind of band it belonged to — something about the logo, sharp and stark, stuck with me before the music did. Once I actually found the music, it stayed on regular rotation through the late 2000s; Rust in Peace in particular barely left the playlist. I finally saw them live in Bangalore in 2008. Then the 2010s happened, and Megadeth quietly dropped off my radar for the better part of a decade.
The past two years brought it back — the guitar work especially, that specific mix of speed and precision, and the vocal style, which nothing else quite sounds like. Then came word that this would likely be the band’s farewell tour, more than four decades in. That reframed everything. Megadeth stopped being an option on any trip I was planning and became the reason for one. Lisbon is where three of the five shows on this trail landed specifically because Megadeth was playing there — Iron Maiden and Scorpions followed into the same city, but Megadeth is why Lisbon made the list at all.
Getting There
London to Lisbon is a short hop — two and a half hours in the air, barely enough time to properly settle in. The airport on arrival was a little chaotic, but the train into the city more than made up for it: a genuinely pleasant ride, arriving into an evening that had already gone quiet, most shops shuttered for the night. Dinner was a simple salad, followed by a short walk around the neighborhood I was staying in. Lisbon in July holds onto daylight until close to 9:30pm, and there’s something calming about a city still lit.
The City
Lisbon’s first impression was something I hadn’t quite felt before — the trams, the yellow-toned buildings, a texture to the place that’s hard to pin down until you’re standing in it. The food did a lot of the convincing: grilled chicken became a fast favorite, and the egg tarts — sold everywhere, but genuinely transcendent at the right spot — turned into a nightly ritual, an espresso and a tart to close out every evening I spent there.
The morning of the Megadeth show was for a short train ride out to a nearby small town — a carriage mixing locals and tourists, which is always a different experience than either group riding alone. It was a Sunday, and most of the locals aboard were headed to the beach, arms full of picnic bags, swim gear, and collapsible umbrella tents. I tend to gravitate toward exactly this kind of morning — a quiet stroll through a neighborhood that has nothing to do with tourism, before the day turns back toward a stage and a crowd.
The Venue
The show was at MEO Arena, in Parque das Nações — a modern part of the city built for exactly this kind of event, with a shopping centre right next door and easy access by metro or bus. Getting in was smooth, no crush at the gates, no scramble for position.
My seat was elevated, off to the side of the stage — a deliberate choice, and a slightly unusual one for me. I’ve always said metal shows aren’t really built for sitting down; the energy lives in the crowd, not above it. But I’d watched footage of “Symphony of Destruction” online more times than I can count, the whole floor singing and jumping in unison, and some part of me wanted to see that exact scene play out in front of me rather than inside it. Reality had other plans.
The Show
This wasn’t just a Megadeth show — it was Evil Live, a one-day festival at the arena stacked with names: Imminence, The Gathering, and Converge opened the day, followed by Mastodon, the Atlanta band that’s spent two decades turning sludge and progressive metal into something almost symphonic. Mastodon were electric, exactly the kind of set that gears a crowd up for what’s supposed to come next.
What was supposed to come next was Megadeth, with Marilyn Manson closing the night. The crew struck Megadeth’s stage fast — twenty, thirty minutes, and everything was set, waiting. Then the actual waiting began. Ten minutes felt normal. Thirty started to feel long. By the time we crossed an hour, the jokes in the crowd around me had shifted from “they’re just running late” to something closer to nervous.
Then came an announcement in Portuguese, and a wave of noise moved through the arena before I understood a single word of it. I assumed, still, that it was about a delay. Then bottles started flying toward the stage, and I knew it was something else. A local standing near me delivered the news: Megadeth had cancelled, some technical issue, and Marilyn Manson would go on early instead, at 10:30.
Most of that crowd — by a rough guess, seventy or eighty percent of the arena — had come specifically for Megadeth. Plenty had traveled in from other parts of Portugal for exactly this. A significant part of the crowd headed straight for the exits.
I’d imagined screaming through “Peace Sells,” jumping through “Symphony of Destruction,” headbanging through “Holy Wars.” None of it happened.
Marilyn Manson was never part of the plan. I’d been mildly curious about him for years — mostly the visuals, the aesthetic, from a distance — but when I picked this festival, it was entirely for Megadeth; his name barely registered on the lineup. For a moment after the announcement, I actually considered staying: a chance to watch an artist I never expected to see. But the disappointment was heavier than the curiosity, and I left instead, heading back for an early night.
Megadeth posted an apology on social media not long after, citing a technical issue and promising to make it up to Lisbon. For the city, that’s a fair trade — bands like this come through often enough that there’ll be another night. For someone who built a chunk of an international trip specifically around this one show, there isn’t really an equivalent second chance. No easy repeat: same planning, same cost, all over again.
The Comedown
What actually got me through the walk back wasn’t logic, it was arithmetic: I’d already seen Megadeth once, years ago, and there will likely be another chance somewhere down the line. And two days away was Iron Maiden — a band that does something to me on stage that nothing else quite matches, a kind of energy that makes everything else fall away. That was enough to get me to the hotel in one piece, already looking forward to it.
Practical Notes
MEO Arena is single-entry — once you leave, you can’t get back in, so plan your night around that if you’re hoping to duck out for food. It’s an easy trip via the red metro line to Oriente, with a shopping centre right beside the arena for anything you need before the show.
Setlist — what Megadeth would likely have played
Never happened, but based on the sets played elsewhere on this farewell tour.
- Tipping Point
- Hangar 18
- Dread and the Fugitive Mind
- Sweating Bullets
- Angry Again
- I Don’t Care
- Wake Up Dead
- In My Darkest Hour
- Countdown to Extinction
- Dystopia
- Skin o’ My Teeth
- Tornado of Souls
- Trust
- Symphony of Destruction
- Mechanix
- Peace Sells
- Holy Wars… The Punishment Due