Teemu Mäntysaari

Teemu Mäntysaari has been Megadeth's guitarist since 2023, when he took the place left by Kiko Loureiro. Born in Finland in 1987, he is the first Finn in the band's history, and arrived with a reputation built on ground quite distinct from American thrash. His name came from Wintersun, the Finnish melodic metal band where he played for more than a decade — a repertoire of orchestral layers, Nordic scales and dense arrangements, demanding a kind of harmonic reading thrash does not normally ask for. That different grounding is exactly what he brings: melodic, clean phrasing inside material written by Dave Mustaine, angular and full of metric shifts. His arrival coincided with the band's final chapter. Mäntysaari recorded the self-titled album Megadeth, announced as the last studio record, worked on across ten months between late 2024 and September 2025 and released on 23 January 2026. It reached number one on the American Billboard 200 — the only album in the group's career to do so, forty years after its debut. From it came "Tipping Point", "I Don't Care", "Let There Be Shred" and "Puppet Parade". In interviews, Mäntysaari described as a surprise the degree of participation Mustaine opened up to the other members in writing the record — unusual in a band historically steered by one person alone.