ANTHRAX Guitarist On New Album: It's Great To Finally Hear These Tunes With Right Vocalist

Geeks Of Doom recently conducted an interview with ANTHRAX/THE DAMNED THINGS guitarist Rob Caggiano. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Geeks of Doom: How will you cope [touring] without [ANTHRAX guitarist] Scott Ian in July? Did you know Andreas [Kisser, SEPULTURA guitarist] before he agreed to cover?

Rob Caggiano: Yeah, we've known Andreas for a long time. He's a great guitar player. It's definitely going to be a little strange having an ANTHRAX show without Scott Ian. But I think Andreas is definitely going to pull it off and it's going to be fun. I mean, it is what it is; Scott's having a baby, we've got to understand and respect that.

Geeks of Doom: You worked with [former ANTHRAX singer] John Bush for a long time, so were you excited last year to get to work with [current ANTHRAX frontman] Joey [Belladonna]?

Rob Caggiano: Yeah, you know I didn't really know what to expect from Joey. Prior to that the only lineup as far as ANTHRAX goes that I was involved in was with John Bush. I was real comfortable with that because John's an amazing singer, he's a great guy. I really didn't even know Joey. I met Joey once in New York a while ago, but I didn't really know him so I didn't know what to expect. But we did the first show in Poland and it was phenomenal. He's singing better now than he ever sang, I think, and the band sounds killer with him in it. He's a great frontman, we're really psyched to have him on board.

Geeks of Doom: Awesome. Your first ANTHRAX album, "We've Come For You All", was their first album in five years. So going into that were you excited, did you feel any pressure?

Rob Caggiano: Yeah I was really excited. You know, at that point I hadn't been in the band too long. And as it turns out I ended up actually producing the record as well, and recording it. It was definitely an interesting experience, you know, wearing two hats, no pun intended! [laughs and points to his trademark cap] But yeah, making that record was great, we had a lot of fun doing it. It took a long time. I think every ANTHRAX record takes a long time at this point! [laughs] But we're really proud of that one and I think the fans really dig it. I'm super-excited about the new one. We're basically coming down the home stretch on that and it's sounding great. We're shooting for September release.

Geeks of Doom: ANTHRAX has been going for about thirty years now and it's survived a huge amount of lineup changes but still you create great music that's definable as ANTHRAX music. As someone who's been both sides of that, what would you put that down to?

Rob Caggiano: To start with, like you said, the band's been around for thirty years and, yeah, there's definitely been a lot of turbulence and different singers and lineup changes and all that stuff. But the core of the band has always stayed the same, which is Scott Ian, Charlie Benante, and Frankie Bello. I think that, in and of itself, equates to the ANTHRAX sound being consistent throughout the years. I think that's a big part of it.

Geeks of Doom: Can you tell us a bit about "Worship Music"? What we can expect in September?

Rob Caggiano: "Worship Music" is going to be a crushing ANTHRAX record. It's got all the elements. There's moments where it has the spirit of "Among The Living", at the same time it's also a progression from "We've Come For You All", certain aspects. Joey sounds phenomenal on the record, so excited about it. All of us have been working on these songs for so long, this record's taking forever! But it's great to actually finally hear a lot of these tunes finished and with the right vocalist singing! [laughs]

Read the entire interview from Geeks Of Doom.