MD.45 was a side project put together by Megadeth's guitarist/frontman Dave Mustaine ,Fear's Lee Ving on singing duties, bassist Kelly LeMieux and former Suicidal Tendencies member Jimmy DeGrasso on drums. Dave Mustaine, fed up with Megadeth at the time, but still interested in music, wanted to create an album showcasing a different musical style than Megadeth.

According to an answer given on the Megadeth website, "Mustaine and Ving created the band name by reversing their initials. Dave Mustaine's reversed are MD and Lee Ving's are VL which is 45 in Roman numerals hence the name MD.45", although 45 is more properly represented in Roman numerals as XLV, acknowledged in a later answer. The initials also stand for members of the band: Mustaine, DeGrasso, Ving and LeMieux.

The first (and only) album released was The Craving in Japan first on May 29, 1996 and in other nations on (July 23, 1996). According to the album's liner notes, The Creed was originally a Megadeth demo song, which is on the 2004 remastered edition of the album featuring the then line-up of Megadeth.

Almost a decade later, while Capitol Records was releasing remastered versions of Megadeth's back catalog, Dave Mustaine chose to remaster The Craving. According to the liner notes, during the remastering process, it was realized that the vocal track and harmonica track were "missing." Because of the prior disappointment with Lee Ving's vocals and the alleged fact that fans wanted to hear Mustaine sing, Mustaine chose to do the vocals himself and simulate the harmonica parts on the guitar. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.