Many Megadeth fans were shocked last month when drummer Shawn Drover and guitarist Chris Broderick nearly simultaneously announced their departures from the band. In his first interview since leaving the band, Broderick spoke with SiriusXM host Jose Mangin about his decision to leave and also announced that he and Drover had formed a new band.

When asked about his future plans, Broderick revealed, "Well, one of the things that I've always wanted to do is a solo CD, so I'm definitely gonna be working on that in 2015. But one of the things that I've really recently become very excited about is, through talking with Shawn Drover, we've talked about how we had all this material that was never gonna get released, all these killer, heavy riffs that we had written and stuff, and so we just decided, 'Hey, why don't we put the stuff out? Why don't we form a band and get out these killer riffs, just to see what people think?' So we formed a band, we're working with a killer singer -- he's awesome -- and we've got record labels that have made some good offers on the table, and we're really excited about where that's gonna go." Details on the band name and the identity of the singer will be forthcoming according to Broderick.

The guitarist also addressed his exit from Megadeth with Mangin and the '666-Live' callers. He explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): "It's not gonna be as exciting as anybody would want. It's not gonna be some huge drama thing or anything like that. It was simply time. I'd been in Megadeth for seven years and I really wanted to just be able to have that kind of creative freedom to write anything I wanted to, to go anywhere with it that I wanted to and just kind of direct my own course."

He added, "The way I kind of think of it is it's kind of not unlike a chef that works at a restaurant that decides that he wants to open up his own restaurant or maybe a lawyer that wants to start his own firm or something like that. It was a great time to move on. And I think, talking with Shawn, Shawn was in the exact same place. We had talked about it and we had thought about it for a little bit. And so when Shawn quit, it was, like, 'Whoah! What happened?' I mean, I knew that we had talked about it, but he did it; he actually just left the band."

Broderick says as soon as Drover made his decision public, he knew it was the right move and he then started the conversations to follow suit. "Megadeth is going to be ramping up for their next CD recording cycle and if you've got trepidation about being part of something, you don't wanna commit to that process, the writing process, and then bail on 'em," says the guitarist. He adds that David Ellefson and his sponsors were among his first calls before making the decision. Broderick also said there was definitely some disappointment from frontman Dave Mustaine when he let him know he was leaving the band.

Meanwhile, even without Drover and Broderick, Megadeth have vowed to continue and David Ellefson revealed that much of 2015 will be devoted to recording their next disc. Replacements for the two musicians have yet to be named.

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