The Big Four Finally Come Home

By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal

My rating:

April 23rd 2011, Empire Polo Club, Indio CA: Metallica joined forces with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax for the first time in history to perform a string of shows on some of the biggest festival stages in Europe last year. After reading about those shows and watching the DVD from the Sofia stop of that tour, the one question on every American fan's mind was, "When will this happen here?" After quite a few months, the wait was finally over at least for some of these fans as the famed quartet landed in Indio CA for a one-off appearance. As Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian aptly put it, because of the fact that three of the four bands started in Los Angeles, this was a homecoming.

The fanfare and anticipation was there to be seen as thousands of people lined up to get in to the venue, starting as early as 5.30 in the morning. All of the early birds were obviously in line to get a spot as close to the stage as they possibly could, but I'm sure even they knew that staying in one spot for the entirety of the show was going to be a monumental task. And this is why whenever the cameras focussed on the front row, the faces that came up on the giant screens were largely different each time. I'm glad people did it that way, because I was hoping to see everyone enjoying the festival atmosphere rather than passing out due to over-exhaustion.

ANTHRAX: The doors, or rather the floodgates were opened at 2 PM and the ground filled up in no time at all. The stage was huge, just about the same size as the one I saw on the Big Four Sofia DVD. Anthrax promptly started the show at 4 o clock in the hot and windy desert with their staple opener "Caught In A Mosh". The first half of their set was really solid, with fan favorites like "Madhouse", "Among The Living" and "Antisocial". But it was really during "Indians" that they got the crowd going, stopping and restarting the war dance part of it, because they thought the crowd wasn't going as crazy as it should. The moshpits were quite constant after that, and in fact I would say the volume and frequency of mosh pits was the best during Slayer and Anthrax, definitely a lot more than during the other two bands.

I should also mention that during the last three songs I felt Joey's vocals starting sounding a little strained, while the bass sound was all over the place. The latter might be just due to the tremendous wind that was blowing all around the ground throughout the day, and that surely had a negative impact on the sound, specially for people standing in the back or in the sides. Just to clarify, I changed my position more than a couple of times to gauge the sound from different angles and distances.

Overall, even though Anthrax' set was pretty standard for what they've been known to play in shows, it left their fans overjoyed, specially those who were seeing the band for the first time. Personally, I'm still waiting for the day they bring out a deep cut from their early albums, like the song "Panic", in my opinion the best Anthrax song ever written.

MEGADETH: The changeover time between bands wasn't long at all, considering the fact that people would need to leave in order to keep themselves hydrated and in good health. So the wait time was literally zero as Megadeth hit the stage at 5.25 with "Trust". They proceeded to play their staples, tunes like "In My Darkest Hour", "Hangar 18" and others. But for me the highlights of their show in terms of the song selection were "Wake Up Dead" and "Sweating Bullets", specially the latter as the crowd really got into it, singing along with the lyrics. The crowd response for Megadeth only got better from that point on. The band really should have opened with this song instead of Trust, if this is the set of songs they were wanting to work with. Anyhow, Sweating Bullets triggered a good second half for the band.

With that said, I'm sure they themselves would agree that they got the worst sound out of the four bands. The guitars and vocals kept cutting out constantly, and in fact I remember Mustaine mentioning something about having technical problems. This was a bit of a dampener, as personally I was really looking forward to Megadeth's performance at this show.

So on the whole, theirs was a set the die-hard fans would have enjoyed, and trust me, I'm included in that category. I was singing along with every word Mustaine belted out. But, the song selection left a ton of a lot more to be desired. They have such amazing tunes in their catalogue, but as it turned out, those were completely ignored. There was certainly a case for a song like "Hook In Mouth" to be included and taking into account the fact that it was played on the European Big Four tour, paying fans were shortchanged.

SLAYER: The sun had set and it was much cooler by the time the stage was ready to be destroyed by the mighty Slayer. Even though "World Painted Blood" is a relatively new song, this is as epic as it gets when it comes to Slayer's opening songs at a live show. Tonight was no different. People literally began to go apeshit as soon as the band appeared on stage sans Jeff Hanneman, with Exodus guitarist Gary Holt as his replacement. That rip-roaring start led into "Hate Worldwide", another killer song off of World Painted Blood.I really appreciated the fact that this set list had as many as four songs from that album. They went from strength to strength, and tore down the place through the sheer power of their music. No gimmicks involved, thank you very much.

I enjoyed how incredibly tight Tom Araya was on the vocals tonight. Besides the brilliant performances by the usual suspects Dave Lombardo and Kerry King, Gary Holt was absolutely flawless in his fill-in job tonight, a terrific musician who completely deserved this gig, and for me the 55-minute period he was on stage with Slayer was the highlight of the night. But of course, it was a delight to see a fully recovered Jeff Hanneman make a triumphant return to perform on the last two songs, "South Of Heaven" and "Angel Of Death".

Slayer destroyed all. Enough said.

METALLICA: At 8.35, everything was in order for Metallica's gigantic stage show to be unleashed upon the masses. Even though this has been billed as the "Big Four" show all year long, judging from the set times it was pretty clear as to who the boss was, two hours for Metallica compared to an hour for everyone else, something that could have been done a little differently in my opinion, at least for tonight for this supposedly one-off event.

They opened with "Creeping Death", the perfect Metallica opener, and continued on to include as many as three other songs from the legendary Ride The Lightning album, which was great to see. Besides those and the older material, they did plenty in the set to keep their 'new school' fans happy, with a selection of tunes from The Black Album, Reload and Death Magnetic. One particular song though, an instrumental no less, was absolutely nailed to perfection by the band. It made me turn into a complete fanboy as I let out a scream and a drop or two of tears while enjoying the entire 8 and a half minutes of "Orion", with my best friend next to me. Seldom have I had better experiences in terms of individual songs at concerts.

Nothing else could possibly beat the amount of epic that Orion was, not even the Big Four jam. The whole "Am I Evil?" thing turned out be like a rerun of that movie we saw last year. The hand shakes and hugs all seemed rehearsed and emotionless, unlike on that Sofia stage last year. It was all too predictable. Motorhead has been an influence on all of thrash metal, and they could have done a Motorhead song instead of doing the same thing again. It was hilarious to see Dave Lombardo come out in a Cuban shirt though, keeping it real as always. It is also worth mentioning that this time Kerry King took part in the jam.

Coming back to Metallica's main set, the pyro and stage production was simply top-notch, and I give them credit for putting that much into the show in order to give their paying fans the money's worth. But unfortunately I cannot let that mask the flaws. I'm afraid to say that James Hetfield is well past his best when it comes to vocals. I do give him major props for mentioning that the Big Four jam was a celebration of not just these four bands but of all bands who've been around as long as they've been. Besides that, the timing with the guitar-bass-drums co-ordination was a little off in various instances. The four musicians on stage weren't completely in sync with each other at all times, perhaps showing that Metallica isn't quite a perfectly well-oiled machine these days. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, in fact far from it. I love Metallica to death. But as a reviewer I have to be honest and feel that it's my responsibility to tell it exactly how it was.

So my overall assessment of the show is that while Metallica had the best stage show, Slayer were the best band tonight in terms of sheer live performance. In terms of the venue, the wind really hampered the sound, and while I was standing in the back at one point, it almost felt like the sound was traveling from one direction to the other, and kept circling around. The openness of the field was the reason, and the sound system they had in place simply wasn't sufficient for a show of this proportion. I find that completely unfair on a person who's standing near the back but still paid a 100 dollars for his or her ticket. VIP or GA, everyone should have been treated to the same sound level. It's only the vantage point that should change with the ticket price and distance from the stage. I just wish they did it at more of a 'closed' venue, or at least in a not-so-windy area.

I'm more than a 100 per cent certain that the Big Four turned out to be a cool experience for each and everyone of the 50,000 in attendance, but it could have been so much better.

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