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Twist your minds with fear, I'm the man with power. Among the living - follow me or die. What’s up and thanks for coming back. Actually cut it down to seven days this time! I'm excited! Hopefully you are, too.
This week, the news that caught my attention is rather innocuous in the grand scheme of things. Although judging by the title and opening line, you might have a clue who’s involved here.
An interview with Joey Belladonna conducted by RockMusicStar.com made the rounds this week that had a couple interesting (but not revelatory) bits in it. We’ll cover them late in the piece, but first, a story. And a chance to admit I may have been wrong.
As far as Anthrax goes...and this may be considered blasphemous by some...but I was of a mind, at one point, that Joey Belladonna could have gone off to the New Mexico desert and become a hermit and it wouldn’t have made a difference. After Joey left, John Bush turned that band in to an absolute beast. The power level - in terms of subject matter, riffs, and just plain violence - had been upped to considerably. The longer they continued on, the more Joey became a distant memory.
They had locomotive momentum from the diabolical We’ve Come For You All the proceeding tour (chronicled in the Music Of Mass Destruction set) rolled right in to the Greater Of Two Evils set. And then, the band did the unthinkable and had John sing on a greatest hits album’s worth of all the old stuff that fans knew from the Joey era.
In some cosmic sense, that could have been the jinx that spelled the end. Because not too long after that, Joey was available again and the reunion bug hit Anthrax. Bush was asked to sit on the sidelines while the band went out with Joey again and, after doing that for too long, John didn’t want to wait around. So he left. Not with a bang, but with a whimper had my favorite era of Anthrax ended.
Since then, the band has been in a state of flux. Joey left again. Some kid named Dan Nelson was there for a cup of coffee (and based on what I learned from drummer Charlie Benante, there’s a story to be told there that I would love to discover - but that’s for another time). John sat in for a couple of shows to bury any bad feelings. And now, Joey’s back again.
Article comments
1 - Rob
Nothing against Joey, but Bush is by far the better vocalist for Anthrax. When he was thrown out for a weak cash-in nostalgia attempt, I was officially done with this band.