Needs more Metal Church.

I would dig that.

Metal Church
Iced Earth
Death Angel
Forbidden

Should have their own tour. Haha it could be called the big four of good vocal thrash. lol

Cool idea... I've always thought the german "big 3" (not sure why they had to include tankard) were much better than the US "big 4"...well not sure if better is the word... but more to my taste anyway... would be fuckin awesome if this made it's way down to Australia...

Hmmm... The Night of the Stormrider days are long gone, dude. And even that's stretching it.

Also, Metal Church already called it quits. So that's that.

Thank fuck you mentioned Protector! Easily the best choice for a fourth.

I'm wondering... who will open and who will ends?
Anyway, i really want to see that, specially Kreator and Tankard.

Good point well. Though iced earth and metal church use to play thrash or aleast borderline thrash. Now they are more heavy/power type metal. Though

Forbidden
Death angel
Testament
Anthrax

Would make a kickass tour to replace the one i stated before.

Metal Church are actually back together again. Before anyone gets their hopes up, it's the lineup that recorded A Light in the Dark. In summary, Kurdt Vanderhoof is back again as the only original member and everyone else is essentially a stand-in, although Ronny Munroe has his moments on the three albums he's sang on. Can someone file a Missing Persons report for Mike Howe, please?

Forbidden is on hiatus right now, unfortunately. It started a few months back with Matt Camacho quitting and Russ Anderson taking a hiatus from music for the time being. This coming after that extended search for a full-time drummer (Sasha Horn) based around auditions on a featured YouTube channel. I really like what Mark Hernandez did on Omega Wave but if that's what it takes for Testament to maybe get a full-time drummer of their own again, I'll allow it. Did anyone really think Gene Hoglan was going to be there forever?

I have no qualms with the "expected" Teutonic 4 mentioned in the thread, although I'd consider exchanging Tankard out for Holy Moses as a first option. Interestingly enough, Protector played as "Protectors" for that Chris Witchunter memorial show a couple years back and a few other one-off shows and festivals here and there. Must have been for legal reasons, but come on... was anyone going to get confused?

For me, the dropoff in quality German thrash bands gets pretty steep. The aforementioned ones are all well and good, and if you want to consider Coroner a Teutonic band (and they have been before) then by all means they should be a part of this, but the lesser bands like Exumer and Assassin and Darkness and others of that ilk just don't have that much quality material as far as I'm concerned. Seeing them live at a show like this just to get defenestrated from the stage would be rather pointless.

Perhaps Deathrow wouldn't be a bad fit if they got back together and played a couple songs off each album. Maybe even Accuser as well. Their early albums weren't bad and the most recent two showed a more controlled, heavier style. Vendetta's gone so far off the path from their beginnings that it's basically a different band altogether.

Germany's had the traditional heavy / power genres down so well for so long that it's easy to see why the country's synonymous with them. That's not a knock or anything, just a fairly educated opinion I presume most of us would agree upon.

"The Big Four" term was, most probably, made up by the managers of Anthrax, in order to hype them as "a band of the same caliber as Metallica, Slayer & Megadeth".

In my opinion - Tankard's debut is as good as the classics of Kreator, Destruction and Sodom. I'm sure that if Tankard had a "Satanic" image in their early days and then wimped out and started to make more "mature" crap - they would be as huge as the other 3 bands.