The Big 4 (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer & Anthrax) Announce Lone U.S. Concert, Prompting New Times Contributor To Announce Incredibly Nerdy Metal Project

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Dreams do come true. Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, thrash metal's legendary "Big Four," have just announced a lone U.S. concert on Saturday, April 23 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Tickets go on sale this Friday, January 28.

Despite their status as the godfathers of the thrash metal genre, the four bands had never shared the same stage until last summer, when all four performed at the Sonisphere Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria on June 22.

Rumors of a Big Four tour have swirled off and on since the bands' late '80s heyday but had never come to fruition, likely because of natural rivalries and lingering bad blood among the bands. That all changed yesterday morning with the creation of a Facebook page promising today's huge announcement.

It's probably not a coincidence that this historic show is finally coming to fruition in 2011, considering this year marks the 25th anniversaries of three of the bands' landmark albums: Megadeth's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?, Metallica's Master of Puppets and Slayer's Reign in Blood. (Anthrax was just a little late to the party with their March 1987 masterpiece Among the Living.)

Will a proper tour follow? It's hard to say, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

In honor of this monumental announcement, I'd like to make a slightly-less-monumental announcement of my own:

Over the course of 2011, I will be taking a look back at what was, for my money, the best year in the history of heavy metal. In addition to the three genre- and career-defining albums above, 1986 also saw stellar releases from the likes of Kreator, Destruction, Possessed, Nuclear Assault and Phoenix's own Flotsam and Jetsam, just to name a few. Preliminary research indicates that accurate release dates might be tricky to come by, but I'm going to attempt to discuss several of those albums in the order they came out. Actually, I'm pretty sure I still have a few of them on cassette, so maybe I'll even try listen to them in the same medium that I did 25 years ago.

I told you it was nerdy.

It also appears to represent an acute case of aesthetic atrophy, but fuck it. I've got the rest of my life to listen to new music. This year, I'm going retro. Now if only I can find a sweet pair of Converse Weapons...