Metal
“Heavy Metal’s Big Four: How Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, and Megadeth Transformed Metal” is published on 10 November. It’s by Daniel Bukszpan, a year-by-year account of the four bands from 1981 on, covering the line-up changes, the albums, the tours and the feuds and alliances between them.
The book doesn’t stop at the music: it takes in tape-trading networks, fanzines, the arrival on MTV, the major-label deals and metal’s return in the 2000s. The four bands “put the thrash metal genre into motion in 1981”, Bukszpan writes in the introduction.
From those years he singles out four records: “Among The Living”, “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?”, “Master Of Puppets” and “Reign In Blood”. They “still sound like nothing else”.
Bukszpan has been writing for over thirty years and published “Rush And 2112: 50 Years” earlier this year, alongside “Ozzy At 75”, “Rush At 50” and “Iron Maiden At 50”.
Text by Roger Estivill