My opinion on the big four of thrash metal.

I always see this brought up, and people are arguing which of the four is better etc. Here is my opinion on who is the best between Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. All four bands have some good albums, and all four have some not so good albums, (or terrible albums in the cases of Anthrax and Metallica) and each of these four have experimented a bit with slightly different sounds.

I'd put Slayer ahead of the other three. Slayer's first couple releases are much better than anything the other three bands have ever put out. Show No Mercy, Haunting the Chapel, Hell Awaits, Reign in Blood, are such classics of metal. Slayer released so much good stuff in the 80s, released some good stuff in the 90s although weaker than their older stuff, and their stuff of this decade isn't the worst stuff you've ever heard, especially when you compare it to some of Metallica's or Anthrax's later albums.

Then you got Megadeth. Killing Is My Business...and Business Is Good was a solid speed/thrash release. I prefer some of Megadeth's more recent stuff to Slayer's, Metallica, and Anthrax's most recent stuff. Megadeth had some great albums, but their discography isn't as good as Slayer's in my opinion. If I had to pick five or ten of my favorite albums from the big four, it would be dominated by Slayer. One of the things I thought that held Megadeth back was that Mustaine's vocals could get pretty annoying at times. Risk was a terrible album, it was Megadeth selling out, and can best be described as pop metal Megadeth. In fact, calling it anything metal is kind of stretching it. This is just a hard rock album much like anything that Metallica ever did for the last 20+ years. After Risk, Megadeth seemed to learn their lesson. You can't say the same about Metallica though.

Now it comes down to Metallica and Anthrax. Both started out with some good albums and both have really awful later albums. I'm gonna put Metallica ahead of Anthrax. Metallica sort of went on a steady decline, getting worse with each album. Anthrax experimented with lots of different stuff, but rarely was it ever good, and usually it was really pretty bad. I'd say Metallica has mroe good stuff out, while Anthrax has more bad stuff, despite Metallica doing pretty bad hard rock albums for the last twenty years. At least Metallica never attempted rapping. Don't get me wrong, I actually like some rap(good rap, not this pop shit that gets shitted out lately) and I'm not bashing the genre, but Anthrax shouldn't have even attempted that. Terrible. Newer Anthrax also isn't really my thing.

So in case you didn't want to read all that. Out of the big four of thrash, I think Slayer is the best, followed by Megadeth, followed by Metallica, and lastly there is Anthrax. No one is denying the influences these bands had on metal, or even calling any of these four bad, just really ranking them in my opinion. All four have some great albums in my opinion, and all four have some bad albums.