Anthrax - Worship Music

[TageRyche]

Anthrax

Worship Music

Icarus Music / Nuclear Blast Records - 2011
http://www.anthrax.com

It has been a long hard road for Anthrax to get this album to the people. They recorded it once with singer Dan Nelson but a falling out that led to his firing and/or departure led the band to welcome back Joey Belladonna to the fold and the album was redone.

For the most part, the long delay paid off. Leaving aside my own review, the reviews have been pretty positive. They had a nice showcase on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon talk show and they've just seemed to have been kind of reborn again with a much higher profile.

The album opens up with an instrumental called "Worship". It serves as a mood setting for the album I suppose but I would've rather seen the band just get right to the main course songs.

I loved the pacing of "Earth on Hell" but the lyrics kind of left me cold. The track that has gotten the most airplay so far is "The Devil You Know" and it is a fantastic fast paced track and I love the bigger sound they use vocally for the chorus.

The album cover and inside album art feature zombies and the band members fighting zombie versions of themselves. So it should come as now surprise that the rocker "Fight Em Til You Can't" is a song about a zombie apocalypse. The track opens with a news report warning that the dead have risen from the grave and are attacking humans and then tears into the music. It was kind of funny to me that this song would be on the album because it kind of serves as a tie-in of sorts for Scott Ian's zombified appearance in online webisodes for the TV series The Walking Dead.

One of the problems I did have with this album is that the track listing is listed as being 14 songs. But two of those songs are mere quickie bridge instrumentals that aren't even given titles. To me at least they served absolutely no purpose and should just have not been included on the album.

"In The End" is a song dedicated to the late Ronnie James Dio and the late Dimebag Darrell (Pantera / Damageplan). The first 3 1/2 minutes of the song is a bit slower in tempo but still carries a very heavy vibe, the pace picks up after that. All in all, a song that the band worked and reworked came out as a solid tribute.

"The Giant" is a killer track. It rips through your chest musically and the spitfire vocals and lyrics are outstanding.

The track "Judas Priest" isn't about the band but this is a killer song. The lyric "I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds" is incorporated nicely. The phrase comes from a quote by J. Robert Oppenheimer about the atomic bomb. He learned it from reading the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. I love when bands can work in stuff from the "real world" as actual workable song lyrics.

The song "The Constant" ranges from mid to uptempo and it is another great song with a fantastic lyric in the chorus "Stronger than any stretch of imagination"

As a bonus track on the CD, Anthrax covers the Refused song "New Noise" and while I haven't actually heard the original, this version sounds great.

By the way, the CD booklet folds out to a mini poster of the album cover.

I mentioned not caring for the lyrics on "Earth On Hell" but other than the song "Crawl" and those aforementioned instrumentals, the band has unleashed one of their best albums.

It was a long time coming for this disc and it took me a few listens to fully appreciate it. But I'm right there with all the other people praising the album and the band.

GRADE: A MINUS

[Jon]

Nice review. I like the album as a whole, but the second half is so damned catchy. 

[Scott]

Maybe I need to go back and listen to the NMC post again, I definitely dont like their early stuff and this one seemed like it might be ok because everyone but me seems to like it, maybe its a style thing, I cant get into the style, but I will try again later...

 

Nice review to read though!

[Alan Christensen]

I have listened to this one, but only once, and I like it. I'm not going to buy it at the moment, but I do want Anthrax "Armed and Dangerous" again for my collection.

From what I remember I think "State of Euphoria" is the most listenable Anthrax album for non thrash-metal fans.

But here is a great Anthrax video from "Stomp 442". Despite the dumb album cover, "442" is actually a good CD!!

[RJhog (Admin)]

Very nice review TR.  Worship Music is my first ever Anthrax purchase.  I can't say I'll ever go back and pick anything else up, but this album is good.  I dig the song Fight 'Em 'Til You Can't, and my immediate thoughts upon hearing it for the first time was the aforementioned "The Walking Dead".  That should be a theme song played at the end of each episode.  This was definitely a worthy purchase. 

[TageRyche]

If you were to purchase more Anthrax, I'd go with We've Come For You All.