High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cryptic Writings is the seventh studio album by heavy metal band Megadeth. The album was released on June 17, 1997 and debuted at #10 on Billboard Top 200. This is the last Megadeth studio album to feature drummer Nick Menza. His departure would mark the end of the band`s longest lasting lineup to date, having recorded 4 studio albums (beginning with 1990`s "Rust in Peace"). It is also the first and so far only album where Vic Rattlehead does not appear at all in any tangible form, save for a limited edition collectible card advertising the Megadeth comic distributed by Chaos! Comics, which shows Vic in Hell reading a scroll.