Anthrax (the band)

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