Steve Appleford

The oracle came to Angelo Moore in 1989. It was during a tour with his band Fishbone, as they waited to cross the U.S.-Canadian border in the misty, early morning hours. Moore suddenly found himself face-to-face with the great bluesman B.B. King, who had a profound message for the musician:......

The road can take some getting used to for a young garage band. For the ladies of Warpaint, the last seven weeks riding tour buses and airplanes across Australia, Japan, Europe and the U.K. took a serious toll. The indie rock quartet were finishing up promoting their acclaimed debut album......

The young woman with glitter on her eyes is performing songs of death and betrayal before a nearly full house at the John Anson Ford Theatre. It's Sunday night, and Mandi Perkins is at the ancient Hollywood venue with her band Of Verona to perform four acoustic songs on the......

Katy Perry Nokia Theatre 8/5/2011 Better than . . . another Law and Order rerun. Katy Perry likes to think of herself as one of us, a regular girl with some spirit who worked hard or got lucky, and isn't so far removed from her days as an unknown singer-songwriter......

Thrash has become the music of brotherly love. Backstage at the Big 4 fest on Saturday, all four of the day's speedy metal acts gathered for a quick group portrait with photographer Ross Halfin. And standing tall at the center was Metallica's James Hetfield, grinning broadly with his arms around......

Months of anticipation came to an explosive finish in the California desert on Saturday night, as Metallica closed their "Big 4" thrash-fest with a thundering "Seek & Destroy" for 50,000 weary headbangers spread across Empire Polo Field in Indio. By acknowledging their shared roots as thrash-originators with Slayer, Megadeth and......

Of all the musicians onstage at Saturday's epic Big 4 Festival of thrash, Dave Mustaine arrives with the most complicated history. He is an essential figure within this loud-fast genre of metal, and the originator of a certain style of guitar-shredding - first as a founding member of Metallica, then......

Thrash metal musicians are not always the most social of animals. The guys in Anthrax do tend to get along with other bands, but Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica have famously traded insults across the decades over slights big and small. That all came to an end last year in Europe,......

Guitarist Scott Ian has been metal's No. 1 fan ever since his first whiff of Kiss back in the '70s. He's also been the one constant in every lineup of Anthrax, now one of the "Big 4" originators of thrash-metal set to land on the site of Coachella in Indio......

For Slayer's singer-bassist Tom Araya, thrash-metal has been a 30-year mission. On Saturday, his band joins Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth in Indio, California, for the Big 4 Fest - invading the site of Coachella while continuing a collaboration that began with several dates last year in Europe. This weekend is......