Nobody appointed them. The phrase came out of the British and American metal press somewhere around 1985 and 1986 as a convenient way of saying the four American thrash bands you can buy in a normal record shop, and it hardened because the alternatives were worse.
Who the four are
Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. All American, all formed within about two years of each other, all signed to majors between 1984 and 1987, and all still active in some form four decades later.
What they had in common was a distribution deal and a press office. That is not a criticism of the music, which is mostly excellent. It is a warning against mistaking a marketing bracket for a musical fact.
Why those four
Commercial position, and nothing else. In 1986 those were the four thrash bands whose records a shop in a mid sized American town would stock, which made them the four a journalist could refer to without explanation.
The phrase is doing a specific job: it says buyable rather than best. That distinction was obvious to everybody in 1986 and has been lost almost completely since.
Who got left out
Exodus were older than Metallica in the East Bay and taught half of it how to play, and lost a year to a collapsing label. Testament outsold Anthrax at points. Overkill have released more albums than any of the four without a bad one.
And outside America entirely: Kreator and Sodom were operating at the same level in West Germany, and Sepultura would eventually outsell two of the four. None of them were ever in contention, because the phrase was about American record shops.
What the four have in common musically
Very little, which is the point that most undermines the bracket.
Metallica in 1986 were writing eight minute pieces in movements with acoustic introductions, produced in Copenhagen with a large room sound. Slayer that same year made a twenty nine minute record with no reverb on it. Megadeth were writing chromatic two guitar material with a sneering narrator. Anthrax were bouncing, in shorts, with a tenor singing over the top.
Four musical philosophies. The only thing genuinely uniting them is a right hand technique and a decade.
| Band | Base | Major label from | What they sounded like in 1986 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metallica | The East Bay | Elektra, 1984 | Long, ambitious, multi movement |
| Slayer | Huntington Park | Def Jam, 1986 | Twenty nine minutes, no reverb |
| Megadeth | Los Angeles | Capitol, 1986 | Chromatic, technical, sardonic |
| Anthrax | New York | Island, 1987 | Bouncing, with a melodic singer |
Where the phrase came from
Nobody can point to a first use with confidence, which is normal for these things. It appears in the British and American metal press in the mid 1980s, becomes standard by about 1988, and was never announced or defined by anybody.
What fixed it permanently was the 2010 and 2011 tours, when the four played the same bill for the first time and a piece of journalism became a product.
How to use it
As a piece of history rather than as a ranking. It tells you which four bands the American record industry backed, which is genuinely interesting and explains a great deal about why the histories are shaped the way they are.
It tells you nothing about who made the best records, and treating it as though it does is the single most common error made about this genre. The wider version, which fixes some of the omissions, is in The Big 8 of Thrash. The full account is in Los Angeles, New York and the Big Four.
What the bracket did to the histories
More damage than it gets blamed for, and the effect is still visible in almost everything written about this genre.
Once four bands are the story, everything else becomes context. Exodus become the band who lost a guitarist to Metallica rather than the band who started the scene. Kreator become a German footnote rather than the makers of the record death metal came out of. Sepultura become an exotic aside.
The result is a history in which a genre that appeared independently in four countries is told as the story of four American groups, and in which the most consequential records of the period are treated as background to the most commercially successful ones.
What a fair bracket would look like
Different depending on the question, which is precisely why one bracket cannot do the job.
By influence: Metallica, Slayer, Venom, Kreator. By quality of catalogue: Slayer, Kreator, Overkill, Testament. By historical priority: Exodus, Metallica, Slayer, Accept. By sales: the original four, which is what the phrase was measuring all along.
Four different lists, all defensible, and the only one anybody remembers is the commercial one. Whether Pantera belong anywhere near any of them is dealt with in Is Pantera Thrash Metal?.
Where to start with each
One record apiece, chosen for where the band is most itself rather than where it sold most. Metallica, Ride the Lightning. Slayer, Reign in Blood. Megadeth, Rust in Peace. Anthrax, Among the Living.
Four albums, about three hours, and the whole bracket in one afternoon. Then go straight to Bonded by Blood and decide for yourself whether the bracket should ever have had four names in it.
A note on the phrase itself
It is worth remembering that the four bands never chose it, never particularly liked it and have said so repeatedly over four decades. Scott Ian in particular has been dry about being permanently bracketed with three groups his band sounds nothing like.
A label applied from outside, resisted by the people it describes and then adopted by them because the alternative was pointless, is a fair summary of how most genre furniture works. Nobody in 1986 was consulted about any of this.
Sources and notes
Label and year details refer to original American releases. The origin of the phrase is not attributable to a single first use.
