The Big 4

I was at the Big 4 concert 2 days ago, a very impressive line up that included Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer and Metallica. We entered the Ullevi arena at around 1730 and when we left, it was 0015 or something. Obviously, Metallica was the last act and they played for a good 2 hours non-stop. Others played for one hour and there was a roughly 30 minutes break between each of them. One day before the concert, I realized that the Swedish national TV i.e. SVT was going to show the whole concert live, one of the few things that can only happen in Sweden. I remember that they did the same for Iron Maiden concert back in 2005. I am sure I would have gone to the concert had I known this before, but I'm sure glad that I did specially now that I think back and remember that I missed the Sonicsphere festival last year in Istanbul despite buying the 3-day pass and flight tickets. Anyway, here's my take on the show:

Anthrax:

I myself have never been much into them, so I didn't care for their performance much. The sound quality was not good neither and the only guy that I knew from the band i.e. Scott "NOT" Ian was not there. Andreas Kisser of Sepultura was with them instead and the highlight of their performance was when they played "Refuse/Resist"shortly. I just noticed one of their songs which is called "Antisocial".

Megadeth:

They were a major disappointment despite having a quite good track list which included the likes of "Holy Wars", "Hangar 18", "Peace sells", "Symphony of Destruction", "Trust" (the opening song) and "In my darkest hour". The sound quality was bad and I could barely hear Mustaine's voice. Although Ellefson was also there, they looked not so excited throughout their performance and conveyed little energy to the people.

Slayer:

Same ol usual stuff with a not so good track list. Of all the famous hits (or my favorites) they played only "War Ensemble", "South of Heaven" and "Raining Blood". Kerry King claimed that he had many technical problems in the beginning of the show and I noticed that Dave Lombardo was kind of arguing with behind the stage staff at one or two occasions while playing drums. Tom Araya looked very strange as he was at times smiling with no reason and his few attempts to engage with people were lame and unsuccessful. Jeff Hannemann was not present due to a spider bite (I discovered later) and they had brought a guy from Exodus which was OK. The other tracks were unknown for me but they rocked pretty hard in total.

Metallica:

Despite being commercial and very mainstream, they were by far the best of the night. At one point, I was thinking to myself that even if they had started in 1981, it has been 30 freaking years that they are doing this and that itself is something. James, Lars, Kirk and even Rob played hard and rocked the whole town with great energy. The track list was:

1. Hit the lights: massive song for opening the concert! 

2. Master of puppets

3. The shortest straw

4. Seek & destroy

5. Welcome home (Sanitarium)

6. Ride the lightning

7. The memory remains

8. All nightmare long

9. Sad but true

10. The call of Ktulu: the fact that they played an instrumental song was really cool but I would have prefered "Orion" or "To live is to die"

11. One

12. For whom the bell tolls: I went crazy for this one!

13. Blackened

14. Fade to black

15. Enter sandman

16. Am I evil: They brought all the other bands on stage to play this one, yet again Mustain's could not be heard at all and I noticed that no one from Slayer was up there. I read in the paper the day after that Kerry King said they decided not to show up since they changed the song from "So What" to "Am I evil" in the last second which I find was pure BS since they had played this song together with other bands in Big 4 in other places.

17. Damage Inc.

18. Creeping death: a great song for closing

Of course, I would have put up another track list had they left it to me but I was very happy at the end. One cool aspect with them was that they always put some of the not-so-well known tracks in the list and not insist much on the latest material. It was an excellent concert nonetheless.