JOEY BELLADONNA On His Relationship With ANTHRAX Bandmates: 'Sometimes Things Aren't As Close As I'd Like Them To Be'

David "Gus" Griesinger of BackstageAxxess.com recently conducted an interview with ANTHRAX singer Joey Belladonna. You can now watch the chat below.

Asked to clarify his December 2013 comments in which he said he never "really found [his] place with" ANTHRAX and lamented the fact that he had very little friendship the other guys in the band, Belladonna said: "I was just saying, over the years, it's just been a distant-type situation where it's not like… You know, like, the old days, when I was in a band, we'd go out together and hang together and do things together. And even on the road, we get along great; we really do. I mean, it actually is better than ever, 'cause, I mean, everybody is really focused to try to make it be a business and a working band, moving forward to bigger and better things — striving to be better overall. So I don't really have a problem with anything. I was just stating that a lot of things are just not as close as you could ever imagine."

He continued: "People think that we're just… everything is easy going. It's a challenge, no matter how you do it.

"I don't think anybody dislikes anyone," Joey added. "I mean, obviously, I was out of the band for awhile, so obviously I had a reason to move forward. To me, I think a lot of it was because they wanted to go through the '90s thing, and I wasn't quite the singer for that. I do it my own style and I have my own way of doing it. Obviously, it works and it could have worked and it should have worked. But I'm just saying, sometimes things aren't as close as I'd like them to be and more welcome at times."

Belladonna says that he understands why fans are interested in finding out more about the dynamics of the relationships between the members of their favorite bands, but claims that things aren't as bad as his previous comments made them out to seem.

"I know everybody's curious to see how you do you thing. What do you do? How do you do it? What's it like to be in it?" he said. "Obviously, you can take those small little blurbs of things that aren't as sweet as it could be, and it sounds rotten. And it really isn't. But obviously, there's always room for better and closer moments. I mean, now you can text, so you don't even need to call people, which stinks too. Because there's nothing like getting on the phone and digging deep with a topic. It's been that way."

He continued: "I joined the band and I didn't even know the guys, so here I am kind of the outsider in a weird way, which… I'm by far an easygoing guy, [and] I get along with anybody. So… it's sometimes just people have their own ways of going about it. But, yeah, you don't have to live together, you don't have to go out together. None of us recommend it, if you don't want to, or is it necessary. But I think it's good."

Asked by Canadian rock journalist Mitch Lafon of the "One On One With Mitch Lafon" podcast why Belladonna still feels he has very little friendship with the other guys in ANTHRAX three decades after first joining the band, guitarist Scott Ian said: "I don't know, because I texted him after my mother told me on the phone she just saw something online that 'Joey Belladonna says you guys aren't friends.' And I said, 'That's kind of weird, because I'm texting with him right now.' And I wrote [to Joey], 'Hey, what's going on? We're not friends?' And he was, like, 'What are you talking about?' So I don't have any answer to that question. I'll just blame it on the Internet."

In an April 2014 interview with Sweden's Rocksverige.se, Belladonna was asked if he ever heard from the other members of ANTHRAX about the comments he made in regards to the lack of friendship between him and the rest of the band. He said: "Yeah, Scott asked me, 'We're trying to keep things positive, right?' But what I say is what I feel. I don't necessarily say that we're not getting along, it's just that it's a different band."

He continued: "When I grew up playing with people in my hometown, we'd go out together, hang together and do things together and we (ANTHRAX) just don't, but that doesn't mean that we're not doing what we need to do.

"My intentions were not to be not positive and make things sound like we're just a mess. It wasn't that."

"When we're (ANTHRAX) on the road together, we don't hang out together even then. Everybody goes to their separate room with their computer to Skype or they just don't want to be bothered or they need to rest. It's not intentional. Some of it might be — I don't know and you'll never know that. That's why I'm always picking at people and trying to get them to open up and maybe talk. It's just great to be able to be more conversational with other people. A lot of people don't wanna do it, and that's fine, but I'm not that kinda guy. Sometimes you don't even know what you're dealing with until you talk with people. If you wanna find out what people are thinking, you're just never gonna know, and sometimes it's good to know. Maybe you can get something off your chest and maybe something can actually be resolved by it."

Belladonna, whose most recent return to ANTHRAX was officially announced in May 2010, was originally the lead singer of ANTHRAX from 1984 to 1992, and was considered part of the band's classic lineup (alongside Dan Spitz, Scott Ian, Frank Bello and Charlie Benante),which reunited and toured during 2005 and 2006. His voice was featured on over 10 albums, which reportedly sold eight million copies worldwide.

In a 2010 interview with Classic Rock magazine, ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian stated about the circumstances that led to Belladonna's return to the band: "We had a meeting with John [Bush, the ARMORED SAINT frontman who has been singing with ANTHRAX], at which he was honest enough to tell us that he really couldn't make the commitment to the band that he knew we needed. It was all very friendly, but ended with us feeling we had to find someone else."

He continued: "Nobody wanted to go down the route of finding an unknown. So, it left one option: calling Joey. He was really into the idea of coming back.

"The five of us [Ian, Belladonna, guitarist Rob Caggiano, bassist Frank Bello and drummer Charlie Benante] met in New York, when I did a show with Pearl [Aday, Ian's wife], and we got along really well, and that sealed the deal. It was that easy."