James LoMenzo

James LoMenzo has been Megadeth's bassist since 2021, and had already held the same post between 2006 and 2010. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1959, he came to the band with one of the longest résumés in American hard rock. Before Megadeth he was White Lion's bassist in the 1980s, playing on Pride (1987), the record that broke the group; he then passed through Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society, Ozzy Osbourne's touring band and David Lee Roth's. It is the path of a hired player in the best sense of the term: someone called precisely because he delivers exactly what the music asks for, without imposing a signature of his own. In Megadeth that quality matters. The band's bass exists to double angular guitar riffs full of metric shifts, and that demands quick reading and exact execution more than invention. He recorded United Abominations (2007) and Endgame (2009) during his first spell. He returned in 2021, when the vacancy opened with David Ellefson's departure, and has since recorded The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! (2022) and the self-titled 2026 album, announced as the band's last studio record — which makes him one of the musicians present at the close of a four-decade career.