Yeah, I see what you're saying about the influencial status of Mustaine as a founding member of Metallica and Megadeth. Megadeth will always be a great band amongst the Metal culture and will sell records just because of it... But Metallica has kind of jumped out of the genre and reached audiences that aren't strictly "metal" audiences. Amongst Metal fans Megadeth is, as you said, one of the big four. I retract my statement of saying they're a second tier band... I will clarify and say that amongst the broad spectrum of musical genres they are a second tier band... amongst Metal culture they're up there right next to ironically, Metallica.

Zakk is redundant... but there's something about his songwriting ability that intrigues me. My two favorite albums by him aren't even from BLS. I like his acoustic project "Book of Shadows" and his bluegrass/blues/southern rock project "Pride and Glory". They're both out-of-the-box Zakk Wylde with different styles of guitar playing scattered throughout. Its some good stuff. His BLS stuff is mainly what gets so redundant to me.