Dave Mustaine turns 65 today, and he has spent part of the run-up to it redrawing the map of thrash metal.
Asked by the Czech channel Óčko which bands he would choose if he had to "put together a new young generation of the 'Big Four'", the MEGADETH leader rejected half the question before answering the rest of it. "Well, it wouldn't be a young generation, but I do believe that there are ways to do a new 'Big Four'. I think that TESTAMENT, I think OVERKILL, I think EXODUS, and maybe TRIVIUM; I don't know. TRIVIUM's not really a thrash metal band, so I'd have to think about that. But I think those other three guys would be really great."
His reasoning for the three he was sure about was personal rather than commercial. "OVERKILL is really important on the East Coast metal scene. EXODUS, of course, I love EXODUS. And I've been friends with Gary [Holt, EXODUS guitarist] longest of all people that I've been friends with in the music industry. And TESTAMENT. Eric [Peterson], Alex [Skolnick], those guys are really great guitar players. And I love when we get a chance to play with the band."
The original Big Four — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — shared a stage for the first time on June 16, 2010 in front of 81,000 people at Sonisphere at Bemowo Airport in Warsaw, played six further Sonisphere dates that year, and reconvened in 2011. The last of those shows was at Yankee Stadium in New York on September 14, 2011 — fifteen years ago tomorrow.
Mustaine has been relitigating the list for well over a decade. In 2013 he told Radio.com that an expanded "Big Five" should have taken in EXODUS, "because there was nobody else at the time that had that kind of pull or that kind of importance in the metal community."
The case for EXODUS is well worn. 1985's "Bonded By Blood" is one of the most influential thrash albums ever made, and pushed TESTAMENT, DEATH ANGEL and VIO-LENCE, among others, toward starting careers of their own. Former EXODUS singer Steve "Zetro" Souza has his own version of the arithmetic, and it is less generous to everybody. "I think what [the media] did was they took the four bands who were probably the most successful in the initial period of thrash metal — from, say, '85 or '84 to '90," he said in 2014. "If you were to go off popularity, if you were gonna go off record sales, you would have to say ANTHRAX, MEGADETH, METALLICA and SLAYER. Now, when you ask me that question, this is what I say: it's 'The Big One And The Other Three.' Sorry."
There is a reason the question is being asked at all right now. Mustaine's own band is on the way out: MEGADETH released their final, self-titled album in January, and it entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1. The "This Was Our Life" farewell tour began in February. Whatever the next Big Four turns out to be, one of the original seats is being vacated by the man doing the picking.