On June 16, 2010, a legendary festival took place in the world of thrash metal. The Sonisphere Festival, which kicked off in Warsaw, Poland, featured the “big four” of thrash metal together for the very first time: Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. It was a huge deal for the genre and thrash metal history, and none of the four bands disappointed.
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The concert kicked off at Sonisphere Festival, and six additional concerts followed in Europe. One of those concerts ended up making it to a DVD concert film, specifically set in Bulgaria.
It’s kind of wild that it took decades for this quartet of legendary bands to play a bill together. Thrash metal’s golden era was in the late 1980s, though the genre certainly hasn’t been lost to history. It’s been kept alive by a devoted and large group of fans well into the 2020s, despite the genre getting knocked from popularity by the onset of hair metal in the 1980s and grunge in the 1990s.
The Most Legendary Thrash Metal Festival in History Took Place in Poland
If you’re wondering why the big four of thrash metal never shared a stage before 2010, you’re not alone. Fans have speculated on this for some time. Most believe that the beef between Metallica and Megadeth, specifically the latter’s frontman Dave Mustaine, who was previously booted from Metallica, was to blame.
The 2000s were actually a pretty solid era for thrash metal. Christ Illusion by Slayer came out in 2006. Death Magnetic by Metallica came out just two years later. Early in the decade, Megadeth was more or less on hiatus due to frontman Dave Mustaine suffering from nerve damage to his hands. Still, by 2004, the band recovered and released a few solid albums through the 2000s. While Anthrax didn’t have as much success in the 2000s as the first three iconic bands, the band’s return to the Sonisphere Festival marked a successful period for Anthrax. They would release Worship Music the following year.
Following the amazing show at Sonisphere Festival, the four bands would continue on with additional shows together throughout Europe, ending in July of that year. The whole venture was enormously successful, leading the quartet of metal icons to kick off seven additional concerts the following year.
Thrash metal isn’t dead nowadays, either. But we’ll probably never see a killer lineup quite like the one fans got at Sonisphere Festival on this day in 2010.
Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage
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