Additionally, ANTHRAX will be headlining this year's Metal Alliance Tour. The band will be performing their classic 'Among The Living' in its entirety. Our friends over at Metal Assault conducted an interview with Charlie Benante about 'Anthems' and about Metal Alliance 2013! A few excerpts of the interview follow:
What are you up to these days, man? Just doing press for the tour?
Yeah, pretty much. And I’m also doing some artwork for t-shirts and stuff like that too.
That’s cool. So, you have this Metal Alliance Tour coming up which should be awesome, looking at that lineup.
Oh yeah. For me, going out and playing this Among The Living record, which is one of our biggest records, playing that in its entirety is a little bit of a challenge but we’re going to do it!
Usually you’ve been playing at least three songs off of that album in your set anyway, but this time you’re playing the whole thing. How much of a challenge is it actually, and how much did you have to prepare to play these songs?
I’ve been actually preparing for it, because one of the songs we haven’t really played it live. So you have to relearn how to play it and see what type of approach you’re going to put on the song too, because it’s a very, very fast song. So, I have to kind of pace myself, and it’s a challenge but I’m sure I’ll pull it off.
You’re going to play club venues across North America, which I think is perfect for Anthrax even though you play bigger venues when opening for other bands. The vibe is that much better.
I guess we just want to go and sell these places out, and basically see how that goes. Honestly, I don’t care where we play (laughs).
Coming to this new release of yours which is coming out in a couple of weeks, the ‘Anthems’ EP which has six covers, the Worship Music track ‘Crawl’ and its remix version too. How did that come about? I think a few members of Anthrax have been talking about it for a few months, so is it something that’s been in the works for a while?
What happened was, we would always record B-sides and stuff, and we had a bunch of them that were recorded musically but we didn’t really finish them. Then we were talking, and I said we should really do something with these and may be do a bit more. So I mentioned Rush, and ‘Anthem’ was the song that came out. Then we were talking about more songs and the Journey song came out. So I said I’m going to record these, do the drums and everything, and then I’ll put a scratch guitar part on it and send it. So I sent it to Scott and then Frankie got it and Joey got it, and then we just finished all the stuff that way. We were so happy with the way it was turing out that I was like, ‘Wow, I bet our fans would really like to hear this!’ And that’s how it happened. But we wanted to keep it as an EP and not a full record because we wanted to have it priced very well, you know? I mean, originally I jokingly said let’s charge $6.66, but iTunes wouldn’t do it.
Read the entire interview HERE
As previously reported HERE, after a long and successful run as guitarist for the legendary Thrash Metal act Anthrax, Rob Caggiano has decided that it's time to move on and focus on his other passion: producing records for the time being.
The dates for the Metal Alliance tour are as follows (General-admission tickets are available now at this link):
Mar. 23 - House of Blues - Las Vegas, NV
Mar. 24 - Marquee Theatre - Tempe, AZ
Mar. 25 - House of Blues - San Diego, CA
Mar. 27 - House of Blues - West Hollywood, CA
Mar. 28 - Regency Ballroom - San Francisco, CA
Mar. 29 - The Crystal Ballroom - Portland, OR
Mar. 30 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC
Mar. 31 - Showbox SoDo - Seattle, WA
Apr. 02 - Summit Music Hall - Denver, CO
Apr. 04 - First Avenue - Minneapolis, MN
Apr. 05 - House of Blues - Chicago, IL
Apr. 06 - The Fillmore Detroit - Detroit, MI
Apr. 07 - Bogarts - Cincinnati, OH
Apr. 09 - House of Blues - Dallas, TX
Apr. 10 - House of Blues - Houston, TX
Apr. 12 - House of Blues - Lake Buena Vista, FL
Apr. 13 - Tremont Music Hall - Charlotte, NC
Apr. 14 - The Fillmore - Silver Spring, MD
Apr. 16 - House of Blues - Cleveland, OH
Apr. 18 - Theatre of the Living Arts - Philadelphia, PA
Apr. 20 - Irving Plaza - New York, NY
Related links:
ANTHRAX's Official Site
