ANTHRAX Singer Says 'There's No Reason' He Couldn't Have Done JOHN BUSH-Era Albums With Band

Justin Angel of Metal Delirium recently conducted an interview with ANTHRAX vocalist Joey Belladonna. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Delirium: Before "Worship Music", did you ever see a reunion with ANTHRAX as a possibilty? Was coming back an easy decision to make?

Belladonna: Yeah, I didn't mind doing it. It's just as easy as getting a memo and doing it, ya know? Obviously, you wanna make sure everyone's on the same page. We all like to work together, and just like everything else, you wanna hang out with the best of friends. So, yeah, it was pretty easy. It's just, who knew that anyone would be willing to try? It wasn't really my decision to call everybody. I wish I could do that. I would've done it a long time ago. Apparently we're all willing to go, so I'm happy for that.

Metal Delirium: How much material did you end up having a hand in writing in on "Worship Music"? How much was rewritten when you rejoined the band?

Belladonna: It's a lot of new stuff. I'd plug in some vocal stuff, and I added a lot of cool ideas to what they had. Musically, the actual range of the stuff is pretty solid to what we wanted. There's a lot of new bass, guitars, and drum tracks. Just all the vocals in a most ways.

Metal Delirium: Was it hard to fit into the material that had already been written?

Belladonna: No, you can give me a song, and I'll take it and run with it. It's not hard for me to put stuff together. In our case things are usually pretty well done before they reach me as far as the actual skeleton of the song and the arrangements. Of course, then the words, they can be fit in there. When your dealing with something that's not well written, say someone gave me a song that's wasn't really well thought out. It's not the easiest thing; I mean, I'll still sing on it, but I don't think you'll get the breath of it. I even held back on some of the stuff because I didn't wanna get too wild with it. I knew where I was going with it. I'd get real creative. I didn't have much time or very many days to do it. I only had fourteen days in a couple months time so I didn't get too dangerous.

Metal Delirium: So, do you feel that you could have just as easily been the vocalist on the ANTHRAX albums between "Persistence Of Time" and "Worship Music"?

Belladonna: Oh, there's no reason I couldn't have been. Just take John [Bush] out of that equation. I think it was me from the start. Without hearing the material or trying to compare it to anything I know I could have been on anything. It would've been different, that's for sure. I don't know, I never thought that we would worry about changing anything, but apparently we did. Now we're back doing what we normally do, and that's a little more natural. I think we do well. I think we do great for where we are line-up wise. Just some good shit, ya know?

You can read the entire interview at Metal Delirium.