Anthrax (the band)

This is why so many metal bands come from Florida, I think. "Oh, it's so warm and sunny, wouldn't it be cool if Satan turned the Earth into a twisted wasteland." Your Scandinavian metal bands, on the other hand, would stick with it and make no apologies.

Which leads me to the ultimate great idea: a third-world death metal band. Guys who could talk apocalypse and actually mean it.

The band, whose multi-selling albums include

Ooh, multi-selling! Does that mean, you know, more than one copy?

(Apologies if this is a term I just am not familiar with, rather than a typo for "multi-million selling")

'Caught' is the best moment of theirs that I'm aware of. Fantastic drumming with equally great production.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/30837/marriedwith-children-my-dinner-with-anthrax

http://www.hodinkee.com/interview-meet-dan-spitz-anthrax-guitarist-turned-master-watchmaker

Huh!

kind of a cool story, but the guy comes off a little full of himself.

The public took right to you
Like flies to a pile of sh1t

Recently realized that Scott Ian went to one of the high schools in my neighborhood and is the same age as me. I almost read his book to see if he mentioned anyone I knew.

they were great great fun supporting Slayer in London last month. short but sweet set made me want a full show...

Caught in a Mosh
Got the Time
Madhouse
Be All, End All
Evil Twin
Antisocial
Indians

so I saw these guys for the millionth time Friday and they ruled. which is weird because between 2015 - 2018 I had reached the point where I, like, never wanted to see them again, was just sick of them and their setlist which was mostly one album.

i think it's because their music in the right mindset is just pure thrash joy. it isn't dark, it isn't brutal, it isn't nasty, it's just fun, youthful goofery, even as they get closer to Medicare age.

I was supposed to be seeing Massacre (Kam Lee band) and although I do like them it wouldn't have been as much fun.

also "Keep It in the Family" should be played live more often. as well as "Only", which Belladonna does a good job on. really wish they'd like...pull out songs from beyond "Indians" from Among though. some of the latter half of that album goes real hard.

I had no idea most of the classic line-up was still there (or back). How was Benante? I remember Lars citing him specifically c. the Black Album as a reason he wanted to slow down, because he couldn't keep up. And of course now here we are decades later. Can Benante keep up with himself?

well, they had to cancel two shows last week and the rumor was he was the reason, that he was 'under the weather'. he has chronic nerve issues that might have been the culprit.

but he was killing it live on Friday, so the time off only seemed to help him.

I loved this band as a teen in the 80s/90s and have not revisited their stuff since around the time of Sound of White Noise which was the last thing I bought by them. I really stopped listening to metal once I discovered indie, post-rock, and post-hardcore bands. Now here I am almost 30 years later, finally revisiting a lot of the metal albums of my youth, seeing what holds up. Anthrax was one of my very favorites, especially Persistence of Time. I've been moving through their discography (along with the rest of the Big Four and some other bands) chronologically. I find most of Spreading the Disease unlistenable.

Among the Living is definitely a step forward for them - they really embraced those hardcore shouty choruses and ditched most of the NWOBM-isms. I loved this album so much when I was young. It feels a little more formulaic now but still has some great riffs. That said I am CRINGING at "I Am the Law." Is there a song that has aged more poorly than this one? I know it's about a comic book but... how can someone like Scott Ian have been such a Public Enemy super-fan and yet wrote lyrics like "respect the badge / fear the gun". Did Chuck D ever tell him how f'd up this song is?

I'm now onto State of Euphoria. At the time I felt like this was weaker than AtL and paled compared to PoT. Now I feel like it refines a lot of the ideas in AtL and is actually superior as an album even if it doesn't have anything as good as "Caught in a Mosh."

Have not revisited PoT yet but I'm very curious to see if it holds up for me. Until lately I haven't had a lot of nostalgia for most of the metal of my youth but that one has always, all these years later, kicked around in my brain.

I don't take "I am the Law" as a pro-police anthem, it reads like a teenaged kid's overexcited book report, which I think is the point. hence the summaries in the verses and the chorus.

(obv those comics WEREN'T pro-police but the band was all young then and seemed to want to write a goofy youthful song about a comic book anti-hero who was 'badass', I didn't take it as a treatise on law enforcement as a whole, or a pro-cop song. they were famous for songs like this, "Among the Living" says "I'm the Walkin Dude", but isn't an endorsement of said Walkin Dude).

I get that. And I don't track on comics much so I don't know what the perception of Judge Dredd is these days. But I think of a character like the Punisher who was an anti-hero back then and has since been co-opted by awful people (including a lot of cops!). Has Judge Dredd been re-assessed? I truly know almost nothing about the comic so I acknowledge I'm asking this question with naivete. In any case the lyrics felt super authoritarian to me and easy to distort.

looking forward to the London show in a few weeks....

Judge Dredd was pretty much satirical and silly from the outset - the power fantasy was usually always undercut by how ridiculous things were...but just to make it clear to the people who didn't get it, they went pretty explicit with it with stuff like https://judge-dredd.fandom.com/wiki/America

also just realised london is a saturday night with municipal waste support :D

Charlie is the hero of Caught

I really wonder how much less cool Thrax would be without him

Right