Beamed around the world in a pretty revolutionary move back in 2010, many purchased cinema tickets to watch the first performance of The Big Four; Metallica's handful of gigs where they would be accompanied by all their main rivals from the San Francisco thrash-scene of the 80's - Slayer, Anthrax, and most importantly Megadeth. Formed as a giant furiously-recorded middle finger to the band back in '85, booted-out guitarist Dave Mustaine formed Megadeth with the sole purpose of sticking it to his former friends. There has never been a conclusion to the Metallica vs. Megadeth debate, yet come the end of these Big Four gigs, Metallica invited the other bands onstage for one big group singalong. Now there are plenty stories you can google, with interviews and thousands of pieces of archived footage and articles over three decades that pad out the rivalry, but when Mustaine walked back out to his former band and embraced replacement-guitarist Kirk Hammett to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with James Hetfield once again...it was timeless.
11. We Know The Band Live To Be Spontaneous And We Love It
In 2014 you've either embraced the fact that one day you can read an interview where Lars mentions another album coming 'in the blink of an eye', only to produce said blink yourself and read another where he doesn't think it'll be done until 2015. They quite regularly mention that they'll "get round to it in due time", which obviously annoys fans who are clamouring for new material, especially when their contemporaries and younger bands are throwing out content every couple of years. If you're riding the Metallica Fan Train comfortably though, you have to be okay with a few deviations off course every now and then, knowing that normal service will be resumed soon enough.
