SLAYER guitarist Kerry King says that he doesn’t think there will be more shows featuring the so-called “Big Four” of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX.
The four influential acts played together for the first time in history on June 16, 2010 in front of 81,000 fans at the Sonisphere festival at Bemowo Airport in Warsaw, Poland and shared a bill again for six more shows as part of the Sonisphere series that same year. They reunited again for several dates in 2011, including the last “Big Four” concert, which was held on September 14, 2011 at Yankee Stadium in New York City. Since then, METALLICA, SLAYER and ANTHRAX have played a number of shows together, including the 2013 Soundwave festival in Australia. They also performed at the 2014 Heavy MTL festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Asked by Chris Jericho of the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast if he believes a possibility exists that more “Big Four” shows will be staged in the future, Kerry said: “I don’t.” He added: “When we started doing those, I thought it was gonna really rad for the fans, and it wound up being really rad for me as well as the fans. I didn’t think it would be that big a deal, but I loved the hell out of ’em. ‘Cause us and METALLICA, we’ve never been at odds, but we just ran in different circles. And I hadn’t seen those guys in probably 20 years, and then to do a handful of shows with them, it was totally fun. I’d hang out with Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] on days off, ’cause he’s like the going-out guy, and I’m the going-out guy. So we did that. Kirk [Hammett, METALLICA guitarist] would be hanging out backstage. I’ve known [Robert] Trujillo [METALLICA bassist] forever. James [Hetfield, METALLICA frontman], I’ve known James since the ’80s.”
Hammett said earlier this year that he believes that the “Big Four” idea will be revisited again. He explained: “I see those shows as kind of like a celebration — a real celebration of each other, and a real celebration of the music that we all make, and a real celebration of the audience embracing [what] we’ve done. And why not have more of that?”
