00:00MTV came back to us and very politely said,
00:04we will never air this.
00:06You are banned from MTV because we feel
00:09that you are making fun of the mentally impaired.
00:13And we were like, what?
00:19Hi everyone, my name is Scott Ian
00:21and I am here today to let you know
00:25what the five essential anthrax songs are.
00:29This is something I have spent the last 43 years compiling,
00:33researching, and it's brought me here
00:36to the Eventim Apollo tonight.
00:39And I finally have the answer after much pondering.
00:42So here we go.
00:43I guess I'll start with the first essential anthrax song.
00:47I'm going to go with Deathrider off of Fistful of Metal
00:50because that's, as Robin Zander says on Cheap Trick Live
00:54at Budokan, that's the first song of our new album
00:58or our first album.
01:00So that's the first thing probably most people heard from us.
01:06They put the needle on the record back then
01:08and they heard that
01:09and that's the riff that kind of kicked it all off for us as a band.
01:16So I would have to go with that as being an essential anthrax song
01:22just because it really is, you know, a lot of people might have gotten 15, 20 seconds in
01:27and been like, oh, fuck this shit.
01:30And but most people didn't do that.
01:32So it's a good thing that song opened the record
01:35and opened the door for us to be a band.
01:37For the second essential anthrax record.
01:40And I'm not doing this specifically chronologically.
01:43It just so happens that the next one is from our second album,
01:46Spreading the Disease.
01:47And that would be Madhouse.
01:49And I think reason being is that record came out in 1986.
01:53We shot a video.
01:55That was our first music video for that song.
01:57And we we shot it in an insane asylum, an insane asylum in Staten Island, New York.
02:07Hadn't been used in decades, but they would film stuff there.
02:10So and we had a whole bunch of our friends dressed up like patients
02:14that would have been living in that hospital.
02:16And they just, you know, it's a big mosh pit, a big circle pit the whole time like we're playing,
02:20but they're all dressed like patients of an insane asylum.
02:25And then it was submitted to MTV, which was going to be a bit of a long shot anyway,
02:31in 1986 for a band named Anthrax and playing the music we played.
02:35But MTV came back to us and very politely said, we will never air this.
02:43You are banned from MTV because we feel that you are making fun of the mentally impaired.
02:50We were like, what?
02:52Like, it's what?
02:54We're not making any way that, you know, we're not going to get into that whole argument.
02:58But we wore it as a badge of honor because we were kind of like, well,
03:02fuck MTV anyway.
03:04Who needs this lame ass, you know, shit?
03:07This was before Headbangers Ball became a thing in the 80s.
03:12So, yeah, we were very excited about the fact we were banned from MTV.
03:15I think the label actually put out a press release saying we were officially banned from MTV.
03:21And of course, that gets people excited.
03:23And yeah, and Madhouse was that it was our first hit.
03:28Let's say it became a really big song for us.
03:31A bit of an anthem, I guess, you know, and, you know, really,
03:35I think just really caught on in a big way.
03:39And again, opened the door a little bit farther for us to be able to step through.
03:44Our next album was Among the Living.
03:46And that's the record that made such a mark.
03:51It made such a scar on the world of music that it's enabled us to have a career going on
03:5943,
04:0044 years now going on.
04:02Among the Living came out in 87.
04:04And, you know, here we are still playing five, six songs off that record live most nights.
04:10And, you know, it really is the one.
04:12It opened all the doors for us.
04:15And so it really is hard to pick one off that record.
04:24Indians may be the bigger song.
04:28I think if you looked on Spotify and Apple Music to see what you're most played,
04:35maybe Indians is bigger.
04:37But I think the one off Among the Living and certainly maybe the most essential Anthrax song,
04:46this would be my number one, actually, of the five, would be Caught in a Mosh.
04:52I think this song kind of defines us musically.
04:56It certainly did back then.
04:58And I don't think this song has been out of the set since we started playing it in 1987.
05:04I don't think we've played an Anthrax set in 37 years, whatever it is,
05:09that hasn't had Caught in a Mosh in it.
05:12I can't say that about any other song.
05:15I think it's just synonymous with us.
05:17It captures everything about this band musically, metal, thrash metal, punk, hardcore,
05:25the fun of the band, the intensity, the aggression.
05:28It's all in there.
05:30It's really got it all, and it's obviously a crowd pleaser.
05:35The audience seems to like it.
05:38Number four, I'm going to go with what's actually half a cover song,
05:42and that's Bring the Noise, which we did together with Public Enemy back in 1990 on the Persistence.
05:50Well, we recorded it in the Persistence of Time sessions,
05:53but it came out on Attack of the Killer Bees in 91.
05:57For me, that was, it was something that I, it took, I guess, Bring the Noise,
06:05the Public Enemy version came out in 88, I think.
06:10And, but they were already my favorite.
06:12Not just my favorite, there's that word, favorite.
06:15At the time, they weren't just my favorite rap band.
06:18From like 86 through, you know, at least the next five or six years, Public Enemy was my favorite band.
06:24And Bring the Noise is a song they put on their It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us
06:29Back album.
06:31And I remember getting an advance of that record because we had friends at Def Jam.
06:34And I, Bring the Noise comes on and I'm listening to it and I hear the word Anthrax in the,
06:41in the lyrics.
06:42And I put the needle back and I was like, wait, whoa, what?
06:45And then I hear these lyrics, you know, Wax is for Anthrax.
06:48I'm like, what?
06:49Like they name checked Anthrax on their, in, in their song on a Public Enemy record.
06:53I couldn't fucking believe it.
06:55And, and I, I kind of knew Chuck D at the time we had met through mutual friends,
07:01but like we weren't friends yet. I didn't have his phone number or anything.
07:04And I remember calling my friend at Def Jam saying, please get a message to Chuck for me.
07:09Like, like I, I can't believe it. Like they, you know, this is crazy.
07:12And I just had this idea for the next two years, how, how do I make a crossover?
07:23How do I make something happen where I'm going to have Chuck D's voice and my guitar on the same
07:28song?
07:28Because we already kind of set that stage for ourselves because we had done,
07:33I'm the man a few years earlier where, you know, but that was just us doing this kind of goofy
07:39Beastie Boys-esque, our best shitty attempted version of being the Beastie Boys, you know,
07:46and that came out and we buried it on a B side of I'm the law in 1986.
07:50And we just figured, well, if people hate it and want to kill us, it's just a B side.
07:54And, uh, everybody fucking loved it and it blew up and it became this huge thing.
07:59So we already had like this track record where anthrax put their toes in the water of, of rap music.
08:06And, uh, but this to me would be, would have to be the heaviest fucking thing.
08:10It would have to be brutally heavy and serious.
08:12And how could I have Chuck D on a record and, and all this.
08:15And then when we were making a persistent time, we were just done with the drum tracks on the record.
08:23Charlie had finished.
08:24And I had this idea, this arrangement in my head and I had these riffs and I said,
08:29don't break the drums down yet.
08:30I've got an idea to cover, bring the noise, like, but it'd be our musical version of it.
08:35And then we'll get Chuck and Flav to, to be on it.
08:38We knew we had something great.
08:39And when Chuck heard it, he loved it.
08:41And you know, the rest is history.
08:42My fifth one I'm going to go with fight until you can't from the worship music album.
08:48Um, and the reason being for that is, you know,
08:52we hadn't made a record in many years.
08:54Worship music came out in 2011.
08:57And previous to that was, uh, uh, we've come for you all in 2003.
09:02And, uh, so eight years between records and, you know, the band kind of, uh,
09:07that period of time between 03 and 11 was, you know,
09:12I've, if I'd have to say that was definitely one of the valleys, you know,
09:15every band goes through peaks and valleys except for the few lucky ones.
09:19And, uh, but, uh, you know, Joey rejoined the band in 2010.
09:24And I can remember, uh, hearing his vocals for the first time on fight until you can't.
09:30And, you know, and there was this wonder of, you know, obviously a natural curiosity of
09:35what's Joey going to sound like on 2010 anthrax, you know, like, uh, he's been out of the band since
09:431992.
09:45What's it going to sound like, you know, what is, and, uh, I remember being in my car and just
09:50like,
09:51oh my fuck, and the hair was standing up on my arms and it just sounded so right and just
09:58so,
09:59just so present and so perfect. And, um, yeah. And I, I just knew like things,
10:07things are going to be okay. I really think people are going to dig this. And, uh, and I,
10:13I just fucking love that song. You know, it's, it's, uh, metaphorically it's the, the,
10:19the underlying meaning of that song is, is basically it's the story of anthrax,
10:24fight until you can, but it's also about zombies.
