Robb Flynn: Every time I'm out with those guys, if I corner them and we're drinking, it's trivia time. I go into instant geek mode, having them tell me all the stories. I've had a couple of really rad totally fanboy moments with Lars (Ulrich) where I just grilled him on every Metallica question that I could muster up. It was so cool. I knew a lot of the back story about things, so I wanted him to fill in the blanks with a story or drama.
A “Big 4” tour with Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax has been talked about before, and the talk is heating up again. Do you think that will ever happen?
I think it would be awesome. Who wouldn't want to see that? Obviously Metallica is the headliner, by a long shot. Will Slayer or Megadeth back down or flip flop slots? Anthrax is the opener.
Are there any bands from that era that you thought would be huge, but never really made it?
I never thought any of them would be huge. It was so brand new and heavy, and so different. When I was in high school everybody was into Def Leppard and Poison. I thought it sucked. I hated it. I liked Motley Crue because they had an edge and you'd read these crazy stories about them. It just seemed so unlikely that any of them would be huge. The Bay Area thrash scene back then was brutal. It was violent, it was dangerous. There has been a romanticizing that has happened, where thrash was fun, and some bands played that up a little more. But when the real stuff was starting, with Exodus and Metallica and Slayer, those shows were dangerous. It was super violent. I came out of pits with broken ribs and sprained arms. It was intense. To think that would go big or mainstream, seemed absurd. The fact it did was amazing. It connected with people on so many different levels.
I've been thinking about where to go with the new record, and the mindset. I was talking to Lars and James (Hetfield) about their mindset when they were writing Master Of Puppets. Who were your rivals? Who did you have to be better than? What was driving you to write this insane music? There wasn't a template to follow. They had their influences, but what they did was take it and making it 10 times more extreme. I'm trying to put my headspace into what it would have been like for Slayer or Metallica or Rush or Black Sabbath, people who created a style of music out of something that wasn't there. That's the mindset that I want to get in. Having this incredible opportunity to open for Metallica and play arena shows and watch our music take an arena full of 15,000 people who have no idea who we are and watch it ignite in little pockets, until at the end of the show we've captured this arena crowd.
You played on a 360 degree stage opening for Metallica. Was that difficult to adjust to?
Yes. Everything I knew about working a crowd up until now I had to throw away. There aren't enough people on the floor to make circle pits. All of our fans are in the cheaper seats up top. All of the normal things I would revert to I couldn't do. I had to relearn a whole new way to connect with people. It took me a while, but it was cool because it forced me to learn. I walked away from those shows feeling much more confident. I got a whole bunch of new weapons in my arsenal as a frontman.
