Dave Mustaine thinks it's time for Metallica to "step up" and organize another Big Four concert. In the same interview where he said "everybody makes fun of the drums" in Metallica, the Megadeth frontman called on his former bandmates to put on another event with fellow thrash titans Anthrax and Slayer, which would of course mean coaxing the latter band out of retirement.
That quartet of bands — Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer — haven't played together as the Big Four since 2011, and Slayer broke up in 2019, but Mustaine thinks that he and his peers should try to convince Kerry King and Co. to reignite the band for a Big Four show that would serve as a "passing of the torch to the new Big Four" — though Mustaine has no clue who that new generation would consist of.
"I really think it's time for the guys in Metallica to step up and us do one last round," Mustaine told Songfacts. "See if we can get Slayer to come out of retirement and do a Big Four passing of the torch to the new Big Four. It would remain to be seen who they are.
He continued, "I think it would be really cool symbolically if we did something at, like, the L.A. Coliseum, even if it's one show and that's it. Slayer is from Los Angeles, so it would probably make it more convenient for them to go home at night. I personally have been hoping for this for a while, and I keep asking and asking and asking. They're just not into it. But that's up to them."
Elsewhere in that interview, Mustaine went into detail about a publishing dispute he had with Metallica's James Hetfield sometime in the mid-2010s, which re-sparked their long-simmering tensions and put the kibosh on the new "project" that the two were working on. Mustaine says he hasn't spoken with Hetfield since that incident, but he's still hopeful that they'll one day write music together again — and maybe even play another Big Four show.
