The song has an unusual structure, shifting at 2:26 after an acoustic bridge by Marty Friedman to a different, slower and heavier section called “The Punishment Due”. The entire song is generally referred to as simply “Holy Wars”.
The lyrical theme of “Holy Wars” deals with the northern Irish conflict. In an interview with the UK magazine Guitarist, Mustaine says that he was inspired to write the song in Northern Ireland, when he discovered bootlegged Megadeth T-shirts were on sale and was dissuaded from taking action to have them removed on the basis that they were part of fund raising activities for “The Cause” (i.e. the Provisional Irish Republican Army). Dave also recently stated at a gig at Rock City (Nottingham, U.K. 18/02/2008) that it was at this venue that he wrote Holy Wars, after they travelled there from Ireland in a bullet proof bus. “The Punishment Due” is based on the popular Marvel comic book character, The Punisher.
The song is the last song played during the encore of all recent Megadeth shows, though often in the middle they cut to Mechanix then cut back to Holy Wars.
The “Holy Wars…the Punishment Due” video was made in August 1990 (around the time of the beginning of the Gulf War in 1990) and it contained news footage of various conflicts throughout the world during the 1980s and 1990s, the majority of which were of the conflicts in the Middle East.
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