CHIMAIRA Frontman Pays Tribute To ANTHRAX

October 11, 2005

In a recent issue of Britain's Kerrang! magazine, CHIMAIRA frontman Mark Hunter paid tribute to one of his earliest favorite bands and metal influences, the veteran New York act ANTHRAX:

"ANTHRAX are true pioneers. Their sound is so big, it isn't hard to see why so many metal bands wanted to sound like them. I don't think they're given as much credit as they deserve. Maybe it's because they never seemed to take themselves so seriously. It's a shame because they were real innovators and they've been so influential to so many bands that came later. It's mostly about the riffs — the one thing you notice about every ANTHRAX record is Scott Ian's guitar sound; that really fast palm-muted downpicking. Once you know it, you'll recognize it right away. He's so fast and so may metal guitarists are still trying to sound like that. The same thing goes for Charlie [Benante] on the drums. That guy is fucking awesome. He was doing fast double-bass drums before that even existed as a term.

"There's so much of ANTHRAX in us and so many other heavy bands now. 'Among the Living' and everything else up to 'Persistence of Time' were really big albums for me growing up, but I first got into them when I was like nine years old and I saw the video for 'Madhouse', I think it was. They had people flipping their eyelids and I could do that too so I thought it was really cool. What do you want? I was nine! There's worse reasons for getting interested in a band."

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