TESTAMENT frontman Chuck Billy has addressed his band’s absence from the Big 4 of thrash metal, saying during a recent appearance on the Music Mania Podcast.
He said: “Well, it’s difficult to say, ’cause when you say ‘Big Four,’ you think of the ’80s when that was what was referred to as the ‘Big Four,’ which is correct.
“Those four bands [METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER, and ANTHRAX] were the biggest four bands of our era. At that time, all of them were at the platinum level, when there was much more acceptability to this music.
“Around ’91-’92, the grunge scene came in, and all the bands following us – EXODUS and OVERKILL and all those kind of bands – lost that momentum because the industry started changing its format.
“So when they say [METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER, and ANTHRAX are the] ‘Big Four,’ I say that’s correct. We were the next generation of the ‘Four’ [laughs], but we were just caught in the wrong time… wrong place, wrong time.”
