What was it like being a pure metal band after the early-'90s grunge movement all but expunged the genre from the mainstream?
Few people know better than Anthrax founder Scott Ian, who has successfully guided the group through decades of lineup switches and crazy tours.
"Things got pretty grim," Ian recently told Radio.com while promoting his new memoir, I'm The Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax. "We were a bit adrift at that point, after Elektra threw [1995 album] Stomp 442 in the garbage. You had Pantera, who was one of the biggest bands in the country at that time, and Metallica were still Metallica, but there wasn't much trickle-down. Things got really hard for us. For us, Slayer and Megadeth, things definitely did get harder. The crowds shrunk, everything shrunk. It wasn't until the early 2000s when that new scene began to emerge when bands like System of a Down, Slipknot, Lamb of God, Machinehead, that was what started to really reinvigorate heavy metal again and then I can say that the wagons circled, because by the mid-2000s it was back in a big way."
Perhaps Ian's biggest regret was forcing singer Joey Belladonna out of the band around that time. JB eventually returned for 2011's moderately successful Worship Music, but a lot of potentially great years were lost.
"After hearing Worship Music, it made me think that he could have moved forward in the band," Ian said. "Joey actually said that to me in the last year or so, 'I could have moved forward with Anthrax.' I was like, 'I know you could have. I know.' But we don't have a time machine, I can't change it now."
One of Anthrax's biggest hits was a "Bring The Noise" collabo with Public Enemy and the rock group played a big role in bringing In Living Colour and PE to a wider audience by teaming up with them on separate tours.
"Nobody ever gave us s-t to our faces [about it]," Ian said. "When we took Living Colour on tour in the UK, they went over great every night. They hadn't broken huge yet, 'Cult of Personality' hadn't become a huge hit yet. In the UK we were selling out 5,000-8,000-seaters. If anyone noticed that they were black, or cared... no one said anything to me. They were just a great band.
"With Public Enemy, they're arguably a little bit more abrasive than Living Colour, and that was a little bit tougher for people to swallow. The tour in the states, from a ticket-sales perspective, did great. But I think I could safely say that a large part of our audience sat that one out. They sat out that song, and the shows. We didn't lose them, but it was more a case of, 'We're gonna wait for the next Anthrax record.' And then what do we do? we get a new singer, and then we did lose a lot of people, at first. In the States the tour went great, in England it went great. Germany? Not so much. They were not ready for it."
Ian is currently working on a new Anthrax record, but his attention is also on a Mother Superior covers project with Motor Sister.
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