David Ellefson

Born in Jackson, Minnesota, David Ellefson trained on the American Midwest club scene before settling in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. A bassist associated with heavy metal, thrash metal and speed metal, David Ellefson built his career mainly with Megadeth, the band he joined in 1983 and with which he remained until 2002, then again from 2010 to 2021. His playing, precise and nerve-wracking, accompanies the band’s evolution from thrash aggression to more melodic structures and metal-infused hard rock. Outside Megadeth, David Ellefson pursues a number of side projects and collaborations in related styles, from F5 to Metal Allegiance, including collaborations with Soulfly, Ministry or Mark Morton. Since 2021, David Ellefson has pursued several parallel activities with The Lucid, oriented toward hard rock, and Dieth, a group more marked by death metal, whose album To Hell and Back was released in 2023. He also published Sleeping Giants in 2019, No Cover in 2020, then Vacation in the Underworld in 2022 with Jeff Scott Soto. Most recently, David Ellefson joined Metal Church as bassist and appears on Dead to Rights, released in 2026.