The Punishment Due" (also known as "Holy Wars") is a song by American thrash metal band Megadeth.

Released in 1990, it is the opening track off the band's fourth studio album Rust in Peace (1990).

The song has an unusual structure: it opens with a fast thrash section, shifting at 2:26 after an acoustic bridge by Marty Friedman to a different, slower and heavier section called "The Punishment Due",[4] interspersed by two guitar solos played by Friedman, before speeding up again with a third and final solo played during this segment by Dave Mustaine.

In an interview with the UK magazine Guitarist, Dave Mustaine said 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 fundraising activities for "The Cause" (i.e. the Provisional Irish Republican Army).

[10] A cover version of the song is playable in the band simulation game Rock Revolution.