What does it mean that I am still listening to “metal”, “hard rock”, or loud music at my age? — gasp, Peter Pan has nothing on me, and perhaps I have the all the taste capability of a tongueless squirrel. Perhaps I should re-dedicate myself to finding musical truth, genius, and listenability by increasing my listenership of Radiohead, or perhaps “tune-in” with some MTV artists
Then again, maybe not!
Six weeks ago, we in the North American region managed to get our grubby metal hands on Anthrax’s new one, “We’ve Come For You All”. A quite long two months after Europe got theirs, and all comments about the practicality of file sharing with my European counterparts aside, the delay did buzzkill some of the initial excitement that I had over getting this CD
I first found out about Anthrax while in the 9th grade, one of my classmates had — surprise, surprise, a well beat up denim jacket (well converted “vest”) with the sleeves roughly chopped off and fraying. And of the many rock patches he had, on the back was a full sized one of the Anthrax Fistful of Metal logo. I saw it and was like, wow, that looks so damn brutal. Twenty some odd years later, the art looks a bit dated and goofy, but that’s my first experience of knowing about Anthrax, besides looking it up and identifying properly as a cattle borne respiratory disease which is largely fatal to humans
I never got “Fistful”, though at times I thought about it while in high school, I was into the two of the Original 4 — Metallica and Slayer, not so much familiar with Megadeth or Anthrax. Although I would grow increasingly familiar with Anthrax from my buddies in college and seeing them live a few times in Los Angeles, but I would hardly consider myself to be the premier Anthrax afficionado.
My collection of Anthrax is far from complete, and focuses largely on the middle portion of their catalog, or the Joey Belladonna ex-vocalist years. So, I’m not a humongous fan, but I do feel they are an essential part of my metal collection. I had fallen off with following them after John Bush came on to be their vocalist, in fact, the last album I have from them is “The Sound of White Noise” in 1993 (I believe), which I really liked but most fans are in the middle about or down, and they have had two releases since that time and WCFYA
So enough babble, on to our review:
I don’t usually talk cover art, but with this disc, you get a pretty interesting looking cover, done by infamous comic book guy, Alex Ross, which is a really neato, kind of nice to look at art concept with reaching hands and the band members. Oh and that pentagram Satan thing, keeping it old school and campy, no complaints from me
I apologize that I have made you read so far, and have yet to tell you what it sounds like. So, what the heck does it sound like? That’s an interesting question to ponder, it definitely sounds like the John Bush era Anthrax. In other words, you’re not going to mistake this for “Among the Living”, as there is some dabbling with different rock styles (outside of purist 80s style thrash) albeit with that traditional Anthrax crush
Not to engage you with a track by track account, it all begins with an intro — how many bands are employing this technique nowadays? — I can think of more than a few — this one sounds like maybe the dissonant noise aliens would hear in our atmosphere as they came to invade the Earth … now, I don’t know if that’s what they intended, that’s what it struck me as