When you pack 50,000 fans of Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax into one location -- in this case, the Big Four's concert this weekend at Indio, California -- and add heat and alcohol, on paper it seems like you've got a recipe for disaster. Flashbacks of Altamont and Woodstock '99 instantly come to mind. But the police reports from the Big Four show are in... and surprisingly, metal fans didn't cause too much trouble. Roughly two-dozen people were arrested on charges ranging from drug possession to being "drunk and disorderly," KPSP Local 2 News reports, but that's the normal police blotter following any big show. As far as we know, no Metallica fans were used as a urinal this time around.
By comparison, over the course of Coachella's three days at the same venue the weekend before, there were 79 arrests. That means the arrest-per-day ratio for the high-decibel Big Four show and the indie rock-leaning Coachella was basically the same. Stack both those numbers against the 114 people handcuffed at last year's Electric Daisy Carnival in Los Angeles, and Coachella and Big Four look like a peace protest by comparison. So well done, metalheads. Rave kids are the new derelicts of the concert scene.
[Photo: Mark Venema/Hyperphoto/WireImage.com]