SPEAKING OF THE BIG FOUR: HERE THEY ARE, ALL OF ‘EM, PERFORMING “AM I EVIL” TOGETHER

Am I the only one who’s not like totally gaga dick-in-my-hand fapping off about these Big Four shows? I mean, it’s cool, it’s historical, all the backstory yadda yadda, but in the end I’m just kinda like, “Oh, that’s nice.”

But since Axl’s still in Atlanta smoking weed watching Daath record their new album (what you’ve seen from him these past three days has been mostly pre-written) and since Anso already turned in a piece that will run directly after this one about what it’s like to sit in a movie theater with a bunch of old men watching other old men play metal, it’s up to yours truly to report that there’s now video of The Big Four — all of ’em, in every band — performing Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil” at this past weekend’s Sonisphere festival. Looks like it was filmed at one of last night’s movie premieres.

So, that happened.

Now what I really wanna know is about the technical set-up required to pull this off; that’s a hell of a lot of guitarists and bassists up there!

Every guitarist and bassist must have had his own amp rig set up behind the set somewhere; that’s an ass-load of extra set up on the part of all the stage hands, and a whole lot of extra audio channels running through the mixing board. I wonder if each guy used his actual stage rig, or if he was just given some little make-shift amp by Metallica’s crew? Like, I could see Dave Mustaine insisting on setting up his full rig despite only needing it for one 4-minute song, couldn’t you?

It’s also funny to think about the dichotomy between what the audience sees and what actually happens. I’m sure that 95% of the people in attendance at this show, none of whom obsess over metal minutiae on a daily basis like we do, see a performance like this and think to themselves, “Wow! This Big Four tour must be going so well for these bands! They look like they’re having so much fun! They must hang out and party all the time!” Little do they know that the minute this song ends Dave Mustaine goes right back to his dressing room, the Slayer dudes go back to theirs, and no one talks to each other. When Metallica finish their set, they go right back to their individual dressing rooms too. Except the Anthrax dudes who eternally just wanna bro down with everyone and probably actually do hang out. I love those guys. As people.

So, yeah. That happened.

-VN