Anthrax: Agitation Among the Living

 

I’m not going to argue: 1986 was the most epic year in the history of thrash metal. We had the monumental Master of Puppets and Slayer’s brutal Reign in Blood. Two albums so different from each other that they covered every imaginable space within the genre. With those two records blasting at full volume in my room, I thought there was nothing left to be done. Things were about to get complicated for Anthrax, one of the most prominent bands in the New York thrash scene, who, with just a couple of albums under their belt, had barely shown the potential they carried inside.

Anthrax knew there was no future for an ordinary band at that moment. It was the exact time to fully exploit the group’s wide range of musical concerns without looking back. They had the raw, streetwise influence of Bad Brains and Cro-Mags. They carried the epic weight of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. As if that weren’t enough, they shared the spirit of classic hard rock from Kiss and AC/DC, and they were also connected to the emerging New York hip hop scene that was exploding with Run-DMC and Public Enemy.

Scott Ian’s guitars sounded with the urgency of Bad Brains. The rhythm section had that funky swing that was uncommon in metal at the time. Dan Spitz fired off solos as if inspired by Allan Holdsworth. Joey Belladonna wanted to be the Freddie Mercury of thrash. The fact that the band insisted on working with Eddie Kramer, producer of Kiss, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, was just one more sign that Among the Living would not be just any album.

Anthrax was perhaps the most cultured band in the genre. While they were recording, they enthusiastically read Stephen King and Charles Bukowski, and devoured Judge Dredd comics. The Among the Living sessions were filled with internal conflicts between the band and Kramer: both saw the album differently. Anthrax wanted a raw, real sound, Kramer wanted to make them sound like big rock stars.

We can thank Kramer for pushing Anthrax to create one of the albums with the greatest sense of rhythm and cadence in the history of thrash metal. That pulse became a direct influence on bands that came later, such as Prong, Pantera, Rage Against the Machine, and even Static-X. While Metallica sang about war and Slayer about Satan, Anthrax showed up wearing baseball caps, shorts, and Vans sneakers, building something completely new within the genre.

Joey Belladonna was an acquired taste for me. At the time, I was more into the voices of Tom Araya or James Hetfield, his style wasn’t my thing and at times it even annoyed me. However, that same disruptive element was precisely what made Anthrax so unique: a constant tension between the rawness of their music and the sophistication of their vocalist.

In 1986, it seemed like everything had already been done in thrash metal. Anthrax proved a year later that this wasn’t the case and that there was still plenty of room for innovation. With Among the Living, they didn’t just carve out a path in the shadow of the giants, they surpassed them in creativity and opened a door that no one imagined at the time, revolutionizing even further a genre that was still young.

I remember that back then people would confuse the term. They thought it was “trash metal” instead of “thrash metal,” and they’d say: “Yeah, sure, keep listening to that garbage music.” It wasn’t garbage: it was pure agitation. And Anthrax knew exactly how to shake up the imagination, and an even greater agitation was still to come a few years later.