Rust in Peace

The album was recorded at Rumbo Recorders with Mike Clink as co-producer. Mustaine had asked the former guitarist Chris Poland to rejoin, and Poland played lead guitar on demo versions of the songs but chose not to return. Friedman's solo record Dragon's Kiss led to his audition. Clink left for commitments with Guns N' Roses before the end, and the engineer Micajah Ryan finished the guitars and vocals, mainly with Mustaine. Max Norman mixed the album. Loudwire reports that Clink had finished almost all of the tracking before he left.

The title came from a bumper sticker that read "May all your nuclear weapons rust in peace". Ed Repka's cover shows Vic Rattlehead and world leaders of the day looking at an alien body, a scene taken from Hangar 18. The songs deal with religion, politics and warfare, UFO conspiracy theories and the Marvel character the Punisher. Rust in Peace... Polaris is about nuclear war and is named for the Cold War missile.

Reception

It entered at 23 on the Billboard 200 and 8 in the UK. It went gold in January 1991 and platinum in December 1994. It was nominated for the Grammy for Best Metal Performance at the 33rd ceremony, and at the 1991 Foundations Forum it won the Top Radio Album award, with Hangar 18 taking Top Radio Cut. Kerrang! called it "the epitome of all-killer-no-filler heavy metal" in ranking it first among the best albums of 1990. Decibel wrote that every song on it rules, and ranked Holy Wars... The Punishment Due as the best of them.

On the album's 20th anniversary in 2010 the band played it in full on a North American tour. A live recording from the Hollywood Palladium on 31 March 2010 was released that September as Rust in Peace Live. The album also appears in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.