Tour blogs are generally boring affairs, but this new video tour blog from Death Angel is a must-watch. In case you didn’t know: not only is Gene Hoglan filling in for Charlie Benante on the current Anthrax/Testament/Death Angel tour, but right before Benante was forced to leave the tour, Scott Ian was hospitalized due to a severe viral infection, and members of the other bands stepped in to temporarily replace him.

Which brings us to the excellence of this video: it’s a first hand account of the behind-the-scenes scramble to make sure that Anthrax didn’t hafta cancel any shows, courtesy of Death Angel guitarists Rob Cavestany and Ted Aguilar. And not only does the video feature those dudes recounting the tale for you, but there’s some fun footage of them rehearsing with Gene Hoglan and ‘Thrax, and performing with the latter (including clip sof Cavestany getting REALLY into playing the Worship Music tracks “In The End” and “The Devil You Know”). So it’s basically the closest you’ll ever get to actually being there for an event like this.

Enjoy:

You can get remaining dates for the in-progress Anthrax/Testament/Death Angel tour right here (bottom of the post).

-AR

Thanks to Ryan Badami for the tip!

“Scheduling has been a nightmare for a long time,” says guitarist Rob Caggiano about Temple Of The Black Moon. That seems like hyperbole, but gosh maybe not: TotBM drummer John Tempesta has been dashing between The Cult and Testament tours; singer Dani Filth’s full time job is Cradle Of Filth; Caggiano is bound to Anthrax’s rigorous itinerary, and his TotBM writing partner, Tom Cato Visnes, has been involved with Sahg, I, Gorgoroth, and Ov Hell outings in just the last five years.

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Last week, Island/Universal Music released an Anthrax edition of their Icon series, which, in case the title doesn’t make it clear, is just repackaged hits from the label’s catalog shoved onto one new not-so-spiffy collection. By my count, this was Anthrax’s eighth greatest hits album, and that if you don’t include The Greater of Two Evils, which were Bushthrax re-recordings of Bellanthrax songs, or the band’s three lives albums, which are really just greatest hits collections with crowd noises on them.

And if you’re thinking “Well, so, like, who the crap would buy this thing?”, the answer, as it turns out, is almost no one: Anthrax’s Icon sold a whopping sixty-four copies in its first week release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

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Earlier this week, Metallica performed a previously unreleased song from the Death Magnetic sessions, “Hate Train,” as part of their four-night  thirtieth anniversary celebration at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and then e-mailed their fan club a rough mix of that song; now they’ve done the same for another tune that didn’t make the Death cut, this one called “Just a Bullet Away.” And, holy shit, they are making this too easy. Why don’t they just call a song “Everyone Hate Us Now?”

ANYWAY, I actually think this song is… not terrible. Don’t get me wrong, it has serious problems — namely, James Hetfield’s ongoing obsession with being the worst vocalist in the world, the incredibly crappy chorus, the bloated running time, and the lyric “suck, suck ’til it’s dry” — but the main riff is actually pretty catchy, and doesn’t immediately call to mind any other Metallica riffs. I even kinda like the slow, Gothenburg-y section. So congratulations to Metallica, it looks like another slightly-above-mediocre song was written and recorded for Death Magnetic. I wonder why this one didn’t make the cut?

By the way, if you haven’t been paying attention, ‘Tallica have been having all sorts of special guests at these shows, ranging from Jason Newsted (I can’t believe he had time to fit it into his busy schedule!) to John Bush to Scott Ian to Marianne Faithful to… Lou Reed. Yes, they performed songs from Lulu. I’m too lazy/don’t care enough to write about all that shit, but Metal Insider has plenty of coverage if you’re interested.

-AR

If you thought that release of Worship Music meant that Anthrax could finally put all the Dan Nelson drama behind them, well, you thought wrong. The New York Post reports that the former ‘Thrax vocalist is suing the band for a whopping $2.65 million:

Dan Nelson says drummer Charlie Benante, bassist Frank Bello and guitarist Scott Ian falsely stated in “numerous interviews” that he had “abruptly resigned” after getting sick, forcing a cancelation of a tour.

The $2.65 million suit also alleges that Benante last month told the rock-news site Blabbermouth.net that Nelson “was a bully.”

The Long Island native says his ex-bandmates’ “intentional defamation” has caused him a loss of income and damaged his reputation.

The Manhattan federal court filing further charges that Nelson co-wrote the tunes on the band’s latest album, “Worship Music,” but hasn’t gotten his fair share of the profits.

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Broward Palm Beach published an interview with Scott Ian today, in which they discussed with the Anthrax guitarist, amongst other subjects, illegal downloading. And Ian’s comments seem to have created an uproar on the band’s Facebook page. (Although the band obviously saw it coming a mile away — they humorously noted that “This post will get no negative comments” when they linked to the interview.) And since we love a good argument, and this particular topic is obviously of great interest to us all, it seems worth discussing what Ian had to say on the matter.

The conversation begins when the interviewer congratulates Ian on the first-week sales of Worship Music; Ian concedes that those numbers were great for 2011 (especially by metal standards, I might add), but also feels confident that the number would have been even higher in the days before illegal downloading. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Ian says, “because on one hand it’s like, ‘Woo-hoo, we did great,’ but then it’s also like, ‘Yeah, but how many other people stole the record, and you should have sold 150,000 copies this first week?’” He continues:

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Anthrax were playing at the Club Nokia in Los Angeles this past weekend when a fan jumped up on-stage, and a security guard who is also a major, major John Bush supporter decided to use said fan-on-stage as an excuse to tackle Joey Belladonna. Check out the video below; the incident in question happens at roughly the 1:36 mark.

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I don’t watch NCIS: Los Angeles, or the regular NCIS, for that matter, but last week the reader known “The Flying Scotsman” (That’s a silly handle, everyone knows Scottish people can’t fly!) tipped us off that a recent episode of the former show had included a pretty funny bit involving the names of various metal bands. At the time only the full episode was available for streaming, but last night Scott Ian from Anthrax — one of the bands referenced in the scene — tweeted the individual clip. So now that you don’t hafta skim the whole episode to get to the one metal-relevant joke, I thought you might enjoy seeing it.

And if not, well, blow me. I’m trying to keep you guys entertained, you could at least be grateful, dicks.

Funny, no? I think there’s actually a little bit more in the full scene, but you get the idea.

And then I found twenty bucks.

-AR

Holy shit, this is at least the second funniest thing I’ve seen all day. I have no idea where these old interviews are from or exactly what year they were conducted (I mean clearly it’s the early 90s sometime but I don’t know the precise dates or anything), but they are absolutely priceless, and definitely a must-watch. Highlights include:

• James Hetfield when he was still drunk, mean, and inarticulate.
• Scott Ian discussing offering to help a friend kill Joey Belladonna “and his chick and then bury them in one of his unused wells where they’ve been digging for water.” (Ian and Belladonna obviously get along much better now.)
• Kirk Hammett saying that if Dave Mustaine had never been fired from Metallica, “I would be playing with Megadeth… well, with better vocals, though. ‘Cause I can sing better than that guy.”
• Someone massacring a copy of So Far, So Good… So What? with a shotgun.
• Interviews with some of the smartest metal fans in the history of the genre.

Seriously, drop what you’re doing and watch this, you will not regret it.

-AR

Major props to Shane Gillis for sending this in!!!

We have successfully arrived at Yankee Stadium and are sitting in the press box. We feel so professional!

We’re gonna put the live blog after the jump so it doesn’t eat up the entire page. You’ll hafta refresh to get updates. Sorry.

And now, enjoy the snark…

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If you’re not a musician, last night’s Metal Masters Clinic 2 — held prior to Anthrax’s so-secret-everyone-knew-about-it show at the Best Buy Theater in NYC — was probably a massive bore. But to everyone else (like me!) it was a wet dream come true; Mike Portnoy having a drum-off with Charlie Benante, Ellefson talking about famous Megadeth bass riffs, Frankie Bello talking about watching porn and playing bass at the same time, all of them jamming on some classic tunes together, and, most notably, this:

Ian, Bello, Benante, Ellefson, Portnoy, Kerry King and Phil Anselmo performing two Pantera cuts. It’s the kind of staged event that might otherwise be cringe-worthy in its attempt at spontaneity, but who gives a shit? As a fan it was really cool to see all those guys jamming up there at once. It was also my first time seeing Anselmo perform Pantera songs live.

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Few records could be as intrinsically polarizing as Anthrax’s Worship Music, the thirteen-song set whose release tomorrow ends a maddening period of band tumult while launching a new era with singer Joey Belladonna. It’s an album with history, having been completed with a new vocalist, imperiled by the new vocalist, shelved, shuffled, completed again by Belladonna and producer Jay Ruston, and now, at least, unveiled for the world to hear. In other words, Worship Music has arrived with baggage; how much of it will fit in your trunk?

Representing at least two attitudes toward Anthrax 2011, our MetalSucks official roundtable review of Worship Music is co-authored by a John Bush era devotee (MS Co-Editor-In-Chief Axl Rosenberg) and a long-suffering Belladonna booster (MS Senior Editor Anso DF). On the fence about Worship Music? Sick of one-sided, insight-free criticism? Bemused by the way MetalSucks disagrees with itself? Then join Axl and Anso as they grapple with the meaning of this year’s most dangerous album.

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To be in Anthrax today, it must feel like standing at the mouth of a transcontinental pipeline, squinting, feet poised to step out of dank darkness and into light. Cuz that tunnel reaches all the way back to 2003′s We’ve Come For You All and through a reunion tour with singer Joey Belladonna in 2005, a second parting with Belladonna and an attempt at redrafting singer John Bush in 2007, the late 2007 arrival of new singer Dan Nelson, the completion of Worship Music mark I, Nelson’s abrupt flake-out in July 2009, a few shows with Bush that Fall, the plan to re-enlist Bush full time (he declined), the second return of Joey Belladonna, and the second completion of Worship Music with Belladonna and producer Jay Ruston (Steel Panther, The Donnas). Got all that?

But after that stressfest — one nearly the duration of two presidential terms — Anthrax now emerges from the tunnel of stink into fresh air and sunny skies: The completed Worship Music rips. You love it. On it, drummer Charlie Benante and crew fold Joey into the modern Anthrax heavy rock sound (e.g. “Crawl” “The Devil You Know”) and roll out big, punishing waves on which Joey surfs, a melodic power-voice plowing forth atop a Thrash Metal rip curl (“Judas Priest” “Fight ‘Em ‘Til You Can’t”). It’s crazy that there’s an album at all; Worship Music might’ve never survived its parents’ nutty divorce. But Worship Music lives and lives loud as the long-awaited modern Joe-thrax album, the never attempted sequel to 1990′s Persistence Of Time, as Anthrax’s challenge to Big 4 snorers who coast on fumes as relevance laps them, and as a modern metal instant classic.

About the whole ordeal and its happy ending, MetalSucks talked with an affably frank Charlie Benante, who betrayed no fatigue from answering a billion picky questions about the fans’ perspectives, the band’s stiff upper lip, their stone-faced guitarist, Persistence‘s status as a dark classic and harbinger of ’90s frown metal, Joey’s solo career, double albums, Jody Watley, and a prompt follow-up to Worship Music.

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L.A. Reid is the chairman and CEO of the Island Def Jam Music Group, which, of course, includes Island Records, the label to which Anthrax were signed for all of their classic Belladonna-era releases. He’s also a judge on X Factor, the upcoming addition to the long line of idiotic American Idol-style reality talent programs, and as of July 11, he’s also the CEO of the Epic Label Group. And, at least if you believe the New York Post, after starting that nifty new gig at Epic, he told execs at that label that “I don’t want no ugly people working here; I only want good-looking people.” That seems too comical to be true — it’s basically what the Colin Farrell character in the movie Horrible Bosses does, after all — but given how fucknuts the people who run the music industry are, it wouldn’t exactly be shocking if it turned out to be a legit story.

In any case, Scott Ian apparently believes it, and I guess he wanted to show his support for Reid’s completely sound and logical decision. So he tweeted a series encouraging messages regarding Reid’s alleged declaration, in which he called Reid a “TALENTLESS piece of shit” before adding:

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Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

We didn’t play “Guess Next Month’s Cover and Win a Free Decibel Shirt” last month because it got out really early that it was a two-dimensional rendering of Anthrax talking chin Scott Ian, spotlighting an in-depth examination of the darker side of underground metal comics. If we had our way (i.e., more money), Henry & Glenn Forever mastermind Tom Neely would sketch up a jaw-dropping gatefold cover every month. Alas, this month, it’s back to simple pretty pictures of your fave extreme music centerfolds. To curb the crushing disappointment, here’s a rare, possibly-helpful-but-probably-not hint: only one person (man, duh) is featured on the September cover. Guess away.

-AB

Decibel’s August 2011 issue features Anthrax, Arch Enemy, Tombs, Origin, Weekend Nachos, and an awesome Wormrot flexi disc . That issue is available here, but why not get a full subscription to ensure you never miss an issue?

Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian went to northeast France for Wednesday’s Big Four show, but at other July dates the new father’s guitar duties are covered by Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser (as reported here). It’s weird to see Anthrax on stage without Ian — a first — but clips from Kisser’s second gig as temp on Saturday in Sweden are jamming (above)! Kisser is energy for the other Anthrax dudes who, having tirelessly performed for three decades, probably don’t retain measurable enthusiasm for favorites like “Indians,” “Madhouse,” and “Anti-SoCal.” Not to mention, those jamz date back to their writers’ mid-20s. Those guys are relaxed adults now, not lulzy youths. Shit, I bet they no longer even mind being caught in a mosh.

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Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

As the killer gatefold above indicates, August’s Decibel (order here) presents an in-depth exploration of the bond between extreme music and extreme comics. Nick Green busted his ass to deliver multiple hilarious and informative profiles on the industry’s most brutally creative psychos. Today, in the interest of giving you a little cutting room floor action, here’s a quick Q&A with cover artist Tom Neely, of Henry & Glenn Forever infamy.

You submitted a variety of ideas for the Scott Ian cover. How did you settle upon the imagery you created for the foldout?

The only guideline I was given was that it had to include Scott Ian. Which, as much as I love Anthrax, was more difficult than I thought, because I don’t often make art that involves actual living people. I sketched out five or six ideas that I presented to Jamie [Leary, head designer] and Albert [Mudrian, editor in chief]. They picked my second favorite, which was actually my first sketch, and I think it ended up being the best idea overall.

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Earlier this month Scott Ian uploaded some videos of him recording the new, seemingly forever-in-the-making Anthrax album, Worship Music. I didn’t write anything about it at the time ’cause in the videos he was working on the song “Fight ‘Em ‘Til You Can’t,” which we’ve already heard live seemingly a gajillion times, and with two different singers at that (Dan Nelson, Joey Belladonna). So the clips didn’t seem like news, ’cause the band didn’t prove that Worship Music really exists so much as they proved that that one song really exists.

But now Ian has uploaded another video — and this one has a riff we haven’t heard before! And it’s a good riff, too. I know it’s not the most innovative thing ever written, but it’s heavy, it’s catchy, it’s fun… it makes me wanna hear the rest of the song ASAP. It would be really really awesome if Worship Music turned out to be really really awesome.

Worship Music is allegedly FINALLY coming out in September via Megaforce.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

I thought it was pretty clear that our “review” of Anthrax’s yet-to-be-released Worship Music was an April Fools’ prank — I mean, I know I give Anthrax a lot of shit, but “Bring the 21st Century Noize?” Seriously? Even I don’t think they’d pull that shit.

But I guess we fooled Metal Injection’s Rob Pasbani, ’cause he asked Anthrax about it when he interviewed them on the Black Carpet at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards last week. And I guess they didn’t think it was funny. Actually, Frankie Bello seems to have a pretty good sense of humor about it, and Scott Ian seems mildly entertained (and I stress the word “mildly”), but Charlie Benante does not seem amused. Rob Caggiano ain’t smiling, either, but he never smiles and I’m not even sure if the band lets him talk, so that’s just par for the course. Joey Belladonna apparently wasn’t even invited to the show or something so who knows what he thought of it.

ANYWAY, here’s the interview, where the band also reveals that Worship Music will FINALLY come out in September. At which point I’ll do a real review, which may amuse the band even less.

You can, and should, check out all of Metal Injection’s interviews from the Black Carpet here — they spoke to anyone and everyone who was there (except Wayne Static ’cause fuck that guy) and got lots of excellent stuff!

-AR

The possibly-not-final cover art for Anthrax’s Worship Music

So I have a friend who works closely with Camp Anthrax. I obviously can’t tell you the friend’s name, but I can tell you that he once told me that the Dan Nelson version of Worship Music was awesome, and that I’ve been begging him to let me hear it ever since. Thing is, he doesn’t actually own a copy, and has never been able to get his hands on one. Security around the album was tight before the Nelson debacle, but after, he told me, “It was like Scott and Charlie were going door-to-door personally checking people’s hard drives to make sure everyone had deleted it.”

And so last night I got a text from this friend, I guess trying to make amends for the fact that he never did come through with that Dan Nelson record: “Just got the Belladonna version of Worship Music. U wanna hear it?”

I responded simply, “Be there in 20.” And I got my ass on the subway and I went over to his place.

And I gotta tell you, guys… it’s a weird record, and there are two MASSIVE, and massively tragic, missteps… but it’s pretty great overrall. It’s not really like any metal record I’ve ever heard before. Whatever else you wanna say about Anthrax, you can’t accuse them of refusing to experiment — this album is a huge, huge risk, often welding together vastly different styles and textures of not just metal but often other genres of music, too. I don’t know if people will go for this record or not, but I think it’s kinda brilliant.

(By the way, the above album cover is a carry-over from the Dan Nelson version of the record; apparently it may be scrapped in favor of something that “feels more like the album cover of one of the old Belladonna albums.” Which would be a weird decision, because, a few songs aside, this record doesn’t sound anything like any other Anthrax album.)

And so here it is — my track-by-track breakdown of what I heard.

You guys aren’t gonna believe this shit.

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