- Country: United States
- Style: Thrash metal
- Label: Nuclear Blast / Megaforce Records
- Release date: 12 September 2011
Few records of the era took a longer road to the shelves. Anthrax went eight years between We’ve Come for You All in 2003 and Worship Music, and for much of that stretch the singer’s chair was a revolving door.
Dan Nelson was the first man in, and the album was originally recorded with him on vocals. Before long he was gone. John Bush, the voice of the band through the years after Joey Belladonna’s first exit, came back briefly but chose not to commit full-time. In early 2010 Belladonna himself returned, and the songs were reworked around his voice. It was his first album of new Anthrax material since Persistence of Time in 1990.
Against those odds, the record sounds like a band remembering what it does best. “Earth on Hell” runs just over three minutes and gets straight to business. “Fight ’Em ’Til You Can’t” is built on the kind of mid-paced crunch Scott Ian has always done well, and “The Devil You Know” has the swagger of a single. “I’m Alive” carries the best chorus on the album.
Belladonna is the headline. His range lifts material that was largely written before he came back, and Charlie Benante keeps even the longer songs moving. It is the most focused the band had sounded in two decades, and the energy rarely sags for long. That alone would have been news after so many false starts. Not everything works. The closing “Revolution Screams” is stretched by a long silence before a hidden extra track, and a couple of mid-album songs could each lose a minute.
Fans answered anyway. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number 12, the band’s best US placing since Sound of White Noise in 1993. Fifteen years on it reads less like a nostalgia trip and more like the start of a second wind.
Best tracks:
Fight ’Em ’Til You Can’t
I’m Alive
The Devil You Know
In the End
Author’s rating: 8.5/10
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