ANTHRAX Guitarist Talks About Upcoming DVD In New Interview

ANTHRAX's sold-out March 15 concert at O2 Islington Academy in London, England was filmed for an upcoming DVD.

When asked by Decibel magazine what made the band decide to film the London show, ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian said, "It was a total last-minute thing. We'd been working with the company that does the 360 stuff for a while so to shoot this just made sense."

Regarding the setlist for the London show and whether fans would hear more of the "Persistence Of Time" material during the concert, Ian said, "We rehearsed 'Belly Of The Beast' [the day before the London show], so that, 'Got The Time' and maybe one more. We've rehearsed 'Keep It In The Family' and we've rehearsed 'In My World'. It's just a case of we came up with a set for the first leg of this tour, and we'd been out on tour in the States for two months already and the set was working so well with the balance of new material and old material; it was acutally this guy Warren, who is one of the guitar techs for Jeff Hanneman [SLAYER] and Gary Holt [EXODUS, SLAYER touring guitarist], and is out with LAMB OF GOD right now, on one of those legs he was like, 'You guys gotta play 'In My World', you gotta!' So we played it at soundcheck for him one day. But the song is so long that we just couldn't figure out where to put it in the set, and at that time it came down to the fact we were only playing an hour on that tour with SLAYER and MEGADETH so there was no way to fit in a six-and-a-half minute song into the set. The only way would be by taking something else out. Now, we're on the headline shows it gives us a little bit more leeway to play longer, so we're just trying to figure out a way to get more 'Persistence…' in because I feel that that album was kind of lacking as far as being represented live and there are a lot of great songs on it."

On the topic of whether it has gotten any easier putting together an ANTHRAX live show nowadays, Ian said, "Easier? You would think it would get easier, but it doesn't! We still deal with the same shit whether we're playing here or Sonisphere, or playing Yankee Stadium with the Big Four. It doesn't matter; the bigger the show or the smaller the show, I swear to god, it is the same crap on a daily basis. We've had a few lucky streaks, but when you're doing one-off shows, it just sucks because you can't ever get into a groove. But, y'know, we've just been out in the States for a month-and-a-half, headlining, and it was a week into the tour before things started working smoothly. It takes a week for everything to run smoothly, to get all the bugs out, and then it runs like clockwork. That's the way I should have answered it; it's always the first week, the first week of any tour sucks. So we're only doing three shows here, then one show in Moscow, then we go back home and then go to Asia, so by the time we get to the Russian show, things will probably be running smooth, then we'll go home, have a week off and then go to Asia and start off again. It takes a week of shows before everything runs smoothly, so you just walk in there and everything's just right and you're crew is just running around like mad trying to fix crap."

ANTHRAX's setlist for the London concert was as follows:

01. Earth On Hell
02. Fight 'Em Till You Can't
03. Caught In A Mosh
04. Antisocial
05. The Devil You Know
06. I'm Alive
07. Indians
08. In The End
09. Deathrider
10. Belly Of The Beast
11. Medusa
12. Among The Living

Encore:

13. Be All, End All
14. Madhouse
15. Metal Thrashing Mad
16. I'm The Man
17. I Am The Law