Release and Promotion
The System Has Failed was released on September 14, 2004. Three days previously, on September 11, the album was made available for streaming on the VH1 website. The album debuted at number 18 on the Billboard 200, and by December 2005 The System Has Failed had sold 170,000 copies in the United States. In addition, the album had managed to chart in the top 20 in several other countries, including Canada, Finland and Sweden, as well.
Still needing a band for to tour with, Mustaine hired longtime drummer Nick Menza, and newcomers James MacDonough (bass) and Glen Drover (guitar). However, just five days before the tour was to start, Menza was sent home. His place would be filled by Shawn Drover, brother of then-recently hired guitarist Glen Drover. The album's promotional tour, the Blackmail the Universe Tour, launched on October 23, 2004 in Reno, Nevada and featured Earshot as the supporting act. This tour would also spawn the That One Night: Live in Buenos Aires double live album, released in 2007.
Two music videos were also made to help promote the album. The first was "Die Dead Enough", which was directed by Thomas Mignone. "Of Mice and Men" was selected as the second video from the album. In this video, the then-new Megadeth lineup (Dave Mustaine, Shawn Drover, Glen Drover and James MacDonough) is shown performing. The majority of the video was shot on January 20, 2005 in Los Angeles. Many fans turned up to be in the video through a contest held by Sanctuary Records. Another song, "Back in the Day" was featured in an episode of the Duck Dodgers TV series. The episode that the song was featured in, "In Space, No One Can Hear You Rock", aired on November 4, 2005, after having been delayed a week.
Read more about this topic: The System Has Failed
Famous quotes containing the words release and/or promotion:
“The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. “A good colonel makes a good regiment,” is an axiom.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)