ANTHRAX Breaks Down 'Cursum Perficio' Artwork With Weekly Animated Clips Describing Characters Featured On Cover

In anticipation of the September 18 release of ANTHRAX's long-awaited twelfth full-length studio album, "Cursum Perficio", via Megaforce in the U.S. and Nuclear Blast in Europe, the band is rolling out uniquely animated short clips based on the album cover, with the first clip shared yesterday (July 28).

The multi-Grammy Award-nominated New York hard rock titans — Scott Ian (guitar),Charlie Benante (drums),Frank Bello (bass),Joey Belladonna (vocals) and Jonathan Donais (guitar) — worked with artist Mark Stritzel for the striking cover and the animation was done by Emmanuel Cappellini. Mark initially worked with the band's Charlie Benante on the characters featured on the album cover.

"When Tim Burton released 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', they did this whole ad campaign, 'Meet The Characters, Meet Jack, Meet Sally', and they gave a little description about them," Benante explains. "This is what inspired the idea to release these stories about the characters.

"When we came up with the art for the cover, we felt the characters needed to have a backstory and not just be an image on an album cover. For the magician, initially he was meant to be the younger version of 'Among The Living' character — The Preacher ['Among The Living' was the band's 1987 album]. He could have been a magician when he was younger and he is really sadistic. For the bride [Clara] and Dog, we wanted to make something that was another door into the cover and get a glimpse of who these characters are."

Every Tuesday, the group is unveiling the individual stories of each character featured on the album. Beyond the Magician's story, subsequent weeks will reveal more about the Woman In White, Dog, Winged Skeleton and concluding September 1 with Hands.

"Cursum Perficio" marks ANTHRAX's first record in ten years since 2016's "For All Kings", which debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200. The phrase "Cursum Perficio" is Latin for "My journey has come to an end," "My journey is over," or "I complete my journey."

The official music video for the LP's second single, "The Edge Of Perfection", can be seen below. For the clip, ANTHRAX teamed up with director and Academy Award winner Joel Harlow ("Star Trek" and "Alice In Wonderland") to create a spectacular cinematic experience that takes the hero from a dream into an evening of magic where he encounters underworld evil, interspersed with live performance footage. The video includes appearances from martial artist Wes Scarpias, actress Ashley Edner-Tancharoen, actor Troy James, actor and Academy Award-winning make-up and special effects creator Rick Baker, actor Rod Maxwell and actor Fedor Steer.

Two months ago, Benante told Talk Is Jericho, the podcast hosted by wrestling superstar and FOZZY frontman Chris Jericho, about the response to the first single from the upcoming LP, "It's For The Kids", which was made available in May: "Well, for me, I've been waiting so long for this moment because I've lived with this song for so long. And I knew once people heard it… You know how it is, man. It's like when you have a song and you think it's really good, but you can't really… How do you know how good it is until people hear it and then you get that feedback? And it's so important, for me at least, to hear that feedback.

"The first song, we wanted to release something that really represents the band and shows that we're not slowing down," Charlie explained. "We're hitting as hard as we feel we are. So it was definitely a statement.

"Someone said this was a love letter to our fans, and when they said that to me, I was, like, 'You're right.' That's exactly what this is."

On the topic of why it took a decade for ANTHRAX to release the follow-up to "For All Kings", Charlie, who writes the majority of the band's music, said: "The honest answer I can give is, me personally, I didn't have it to write. I didn't feel it. It just wasn't the right time. I was, like, 'Well, I don't have anything to say right now. I don't think the band has anything to say.' And then the whole pandemic happened, which we started to actually write before the pandemic, and then that happened, and then that set us back — what? — two years. But a lot of these songs on this record — there's a song called 'Target On My Back' ['T.O.M.B.']; that's from 2015. There's a lot of stuff that was old that I had, and then there's some new songs that I felt, 'This is too good to hold back and wait. I want this out.'"

Benante continued: "A song like 'It's For The Kids' — I would do these demos and I would put them in a Dropbox, and then Scott [Ian, ANTHRAX guitarist] would listen to them, and then he'd write me. He's, like, 'I didn't even know about this song.' And I'm, like, 'Oh yeah.' I would just do the demo and throw it in there. So all of a sudden, we started to get an abundance of these songs, and then we would get together — me, Scott and Frankie [Bello, ANTHRAX bassist] — and kind of play them live. And it was such a great feeling to be back with them and just playing some new songs. If you're in a band, you kind of know what that feels like. It's almost like spring training. You're getting together with the guys again, and you're doing the thing that you love, but yet there's this new vibe happening. There's these new songs that are being created. Man, it's just a great feeling. And it took a while, but I guess it had to take a while."

Charlie added: "I even know Scott at some point was having a little bit of a writer's block, too, as far as the lyrics goes, because Scott writes the lyrics for the band. And Scott's such a great lyricist. His lyrics, to me — we'll talk about things, and we talk about certain aspects of life or whatever, and sometimes we'll just be talking, and he'll use that in a lyric. Like the song 'The Long Goodbye', for me, it's a very personal and emotional song. It's about Scott's dad, who had Alzheimer's. And it's called 'The Long Goodbye', and that, to me, even when I talk about it, I think about his dad, 'cause I loved his dad. His dad was one of the greatest — just such a great person. And it makes me sad just to think about that whole thing that happened because it brings me back to my parents and stuff like that. But 'The Long Goodbye' was one of those songs that, for me, the music was very emotional, and I remember Scott saying, 'Dude, that melody in there is one of the best ones that we ever had.' Same with 'The Edge Of Perfection'. Scott thought that was the best ever. And the funny thing about that song, 'The Edge Of Perfection', is every time I do a demo, man, I do, like, an eight-minute demo, but the reason why I do that is because I like to put a different variation of the riff. If I'm doing, like, a minute and a half of the riff, well, then maybe at five minutes, the riff changes a little bit, because I want everybody to hear it as, like, 'Well, we can do that part first and then bring...' You know, just arrange it differently. And Scott and Frank are really good with arranging the song."

Charlie also talked about the inspiration for the "Cursum Perficio", album title, saying: "I'd been looking for a title for this record that pretty much summarized where we were and where I was at this point. And I'm not saying this is the last album, but the album title translates to 'my journey has come to an end', 'my journey is over'.

"Two times this happened to me, and it was very strange, the way some things come to me without me even knowing it," he continued. "I was watching this documentary on Marilyn Monroe, and in her home in L.A., in Beverly Hills, she had this tile, this plaque, and it said 'Cursum Perficio'. And when I was watching it and the narrator was saying what it was and what it meant, dude, a light just went off in my head. I'm, like, 'That's it. That's the title right there.' So when I brought it to the guys, they thought it was strange too, and they liked it. But everybody liked it. And that's the one thing — if everybody likes it, that means it's right. So we went with that title. And then the artwork for the cover, I was looking for an artist who did... I don't know if you remember those old Harry Houdini posters, the way they looked, like a Coney Island type of art. It just had this look and this vibe to it. And I was watching this magician, David Blaine. He was doing this docuseries, and it was, like, a six-part series, and after every episode, there was a piece of art that would basically summarize the episode. And when I saw the art, I'm, like, 'That's it. That's exactly the style that I want.' So I went to the credits, and I found the artist's name, and we contacted him, and he was, like, 'Yes, I would love to do this cover for you guys.' And I worked with him about it. And it's a very strange kind of Salvador Dalí-esque type of piece of art. And there's a a couple of Easter eggs in the art. I see fans trying to pick it out, 'Oh, here's something from this album', 'Here's something from that album,' which I love that they're doing that. But each character on the cover has a backstory too, which will come out later."

"Cursum Perficio" will be available as a standard CD; Target-exclusive CD with a fabric patch of the album cover; standard black double LP with pop-up gatefold; Target-exclusive double LP, red zoetrope with pop-up gatefold; Amazon-exclusive double LP, purple zoetrope LP with pop-up gatefold; merch-exclusive lilac vinyl double LP with pop-up gatefold; Metal Injection-exclusive white vinyl double LP with pop-up gatefold; Talk Shop Live-exclusive signed with red ripple vinyl double LP with pop-up gatefold; Indie-exclusive red, orange yellow vinyl double LP with pop-up gatefold.

The band dove into recording "Cursum Perficio" in earnest during 2022, working out of Dave Grohl's Studio 606 in Los Angeles. They carefully pieced together what would be this magnum opus, mining their history with reverence, delivering on fan expectations tenfold, and broadening the scope of their signature sound. Produced by Jay Ruston and ANTHRAX, the result is an album that's as angry, aggressive, and alive as their most celebrated fare.

Photo credit: Travis Shinn