ANTHRAX, TESTAMENT, DEATH ANGEL: U.S. Tour Dates Announced

Thrash titans ANTHRAX and TESTAMENT, who haven't toured together in more than a decade, are set to co-headline a U.S. tour beginning Friday, October 14 in Grand Rapids, Michigan (itinerary below). ANTHRAX will close all shows, and DEATH ANGEL will be main support for the entire tour. The coast-to-coast trek will figure to decimate more than two dozen cities over a five-week period, with both ANTHRAX and DEATH ANGEL debuting brand new material from their new albums. The ANTHRAX fan club presale begins today at www.anthraxarmy.com, and the public on-sale kicks off Friday, September 9 at 10 a.m. local time.

"We've been tight with the guys in TESTAMENT for a long, long time," said ANTHRAX's Charlie Benante, "so we're really looking forward to hanging out with them on the road. And all of us in ANTHRAX are big DEATH ANGEL fans, so this is going to be a monster of a good time for all of us and for the fans. Plus, with the incredible success of The Big Four shows over the last year, we wanted to tour with some of the 'second wave' of thrash bands."

The tour will follow ANTHRAX's Big Four "hometown" appearance at Yankee Stadium on September 14, with METALLICA, SLAYER and MEGADETH.

"We're excited to do this tour because ANTHRAX was actually the first band we ever toured with," adds TESTAMENT vocalist Chuck Billy. "It's an accomplishment 20 odd years later that we're going to do it again. The tour kick-off date is actually about five days difference from the kick off date of the first tour 20 years ago. The first time we performed with ANTHRAX, we only had a total of ten songs, so obviously now we have many songs to pick from so it will be very different. It's good to see that a lot of the faces in the bands are the same as back when we first did this original tour 20 years ago."

ANTHRAX / TESTAMENT / DEATH ANGEL fall 2011 tour dates:

Oct. 14 - Orbit Room, Grand Rapids, MI
Oct. 15 - Congress Theatre, Chicago, IL
Oct. 16 - First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 18 - The Cotillion, Wichita, KS
Oct. 19 - Summit Music Hall, Denver, CO
Oct. 22 - Nokia LA Live, Los Angeles, CA
Oct. 23 - Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, CA
Oct. 24 - House of Blues, San Diego, CA
Oct. 26 - Sunshine Theatre, Albuquerque, NM
Oct. 28 - South Side Music Hall, Dallas, TX
Oct. 29 - Emo's East, Austin, TX
Oct. 30 - Warehouse Live, Houston, TX
Nov. 01 - House of Blues, Orlando, FL
Nov. 02 - Revolution, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Nov. 04 - House of Blues, Myrtle Beach, SC
Nov. 05 - Fillmore Charlotte, Charlotte, NC
Nov. 06 - The Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD
Nov. 08 - Northern Lights, Clifton Park, NY
Nov. 10 - Electric Factory, Philadelphia, PA
Nov. 11 - Palladium, Worcester, MA
Nov. 15 - Town Ballroom, Buffalo, NY
Nov. 17 - Stage AE, Pittsburgh, PA
Nov. 19 - Rave, Milwaukee, WI

More shows will be announced.

ANTHRAX's new album, "Worship Music", will be released on September 13 in North America via Megaforce Records and three days later in Europe via Nuclear Blast Records. The album will be available as a regular CD, digipack, vinyl and MP3 download. Nuclear Blast is also offering the album as a mail-order edition with a bonus seven-inch (featuring the REFUSED cover song "New Noise") and two different double-LPs: splatter and orange vinyl.

The Japanese version of "Worship Music", which will be made available on September 14 via Victor Records, will include a remix of the song "Crawl" as a bonus track.

The Omega Order is offering an exclusive pre-order bundle for "Worship Music", featuring the new CD; "Fistful Of Metal" triple 10-inch picture discs; and an ANTHRAX LP slipmat (only available in this bundle).

The CD cover artwork for "Worship Music" was handled by renowned comic book artist Alex Ross, who has worked with Marvel Comics and DC Comics and is known for his "Marvels", "Kingdom Come", and "Astro City" illustrations. Ross also did the original artwork for ANTHRAX's "We've Come For You All" and "Music Of Mass Destruction" albums.

TESTAMENT has set "The Dark Roots Of Earth" as the title of its new album, tentatively due in February 2012 via Nuclear Blast Records. The CD is currently being recorded with British producer Andy Sneap, who has previously worked with MEGADETH, EXODUS, ARCH ENEMY, NEVERMORE and MACHINE HEAD, among others.

Due to a "serious injury," drummer Paul Bostaph was unable to take part in the new album recordings but will rejoin TESTAMENT for future touring activities. Playing drums on the follow-up to 2008's "The Formation Of Damnation" is Gene "The Atomic Clock" Hoglan (ex-DARK ANGEL, ex-STRAPPING YOUNG LAD, FEAR FACTORY, DETHKLOK),with LAMB OF GOD's Chris Adler set to make a special guest appearance on a couple of bonus tracks.

DEATH ANGEL will release a DVD entitled "A Thrashumentary" in the spring of 2012. According to a press release, "A Thrashumentary" is a combination live video and documentary, all wrapped up in one thrashing DVD. The footage was directed by Tommy Jones (SOILWORK, KATAKLYSM) and mixed by Chris Clancy of The Studio. The film gives the viewer an in-depth look into one of the longest-running thrash acts out of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region known for turning out historic thrash bands such as METALLICA, TESTAMENT and EXODUS.

"Relentless Retribution", the latest album from DEATH ANGEL, sold 2,700 copies in the United States in its first week of release. The CD landed at position No. 10 on the Top New Artist Albums (Heatseekers) chart, which lists the best-selling albums by new and developing artists, defined as those who have never appeared in the Top 100 of The Billboard 200. The band's previous album, "Killing Season", opened with around 2,300 units back in March 2008. This number was in line with the performance of its predecessor, "The Art of Dying", which registered a first-week sales tally of around 2,100 back in May 2004.