JOEY BELLADONNA Talks About His Return To ANTHRAX

Metal Sucks recently conducted an interview with ANTHRAX singer Joey Belladonna. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Sucks: From a fan's point of view, it seems like ANTHRAX has trouble keeping singers happy. How do you feel about that?

Joey Belladonna: I don't know what that is. For me, it isn't hard for me to be in the band and stay motivated and be easy to get along with and stuff. I guess sometimes they're finicky about what sound they want and who they want in the band. It blows my mind. Sometimes when you're there, you're like, "Jeez, am I OK? Is everything good? Am I still okay for your guys?" I'm sure it's gonna run through my mind. I don't like to be in that situation, but unfortunately that's what it seems. They assured me that they're quite happy to have it happen, so we'll definitely find out. I'm going to keep my head straight up and do what I do, you know? Hopefully everything plays itself out.

Metal Sucks: Do you mean to say that the guys in the band are hard to read?

Joey Belladonna: Uh, sometimes. People have different perspectives on what kind of voice they like and what style should be in the band. To me it's like … I was with the band "It's great, Joe, but we're looking for something like this." Man, I'd be like [magnanimously] "Ohhh really? Wow. That sucks." [laughs]

Metal Sucks: [laughs]

Joey Belladonna: "Oh, you want him! What am I doing in this band?" It's a relationship. You hope that all the colors match and you like what you're doing. I certainly think that what I did with them, and can do with them, could be quite cool. It has been — so I never had any doubts — but when somebody starts thinking about it, I guess you get a little hesitation. I don't know if that's [pauses]… great either, but I don't know if it's bad. Everybody's got opinions.

Metal Sucks: Like you said, it's a relationship. Sometimes you have doubts. There was a neat John Bush interview recently wherein he listed like a half dozen really good reasons for him to not return to ANTHRAX. How were you able to sweep those aside and get with ANTHRAX?

Joey Belladonna: Overall, it's a business. You want the business to be efficient and well done and proper. But being in a band, you want to be able to do what you do and be who you are with the right intentions. You want to be comfortable to sing [the way] you can do. It's hard to mold a voice or just switch the switch and be somebody different. I finally have my own style over the years that I feel comfortable with and that's what I do. To, maybe, alter it in a way that's not real, or forced … you're just hoping you don't have to really deal with too much of that. You hope for "Hey, you do good what you do. You do it. That's the way we like it!" [To which you reply] "Alright! Awesome!" You hope to hear those things, instead of kinda getting bumped every way, like I'm doing this wrong or doing that wrong. It's like "Fuuuudge." But those are the big things. I get a lot of … like everybody, I don't care. I don't have to hang out. You can do whatever you want to get it done, as long as everybody is real comfortable having you. I love when we're playing and [someone says] "Dude, that was awesome!" "Yeah that was rippin'!" You want to get that fun in there. Have everybody dig what's going on, and not doubt it.

Metal Sucks: It's been reported that some material from the "Worship Music" album [unreleased ANTHRAX album with Dan Nelson on vocals] will feature new vocals from you, and other songs will be totally new. Is that accurate?

Joey Belladonna: Yeah, there's going to be some new songs for sure. I'm banking on all that happening. And some tweaking, re-doing, and re-structuring — anything that needs to be done. There are some songs that really are quite well done. I'll do one [in concert on this tour]. I did my part on it. It had the outer boundaries intact, so it was just a matter of getting in there, refreshing it, and putting the stamp on it. But there are a bunch of songs like that — four, five, six — that's alright too.

Metal Sucks: One point that gets lost in the discussion is that the changes in ANTHRAX aren't limited to singers; there's also a move back to pre-Bush ANTHRAX sound.

Joey Belladonna: Right now, I haven't heard a whole lot of the songs. I've had some stuff in the past that I've checked out. I wasn't certain about what style was coming down, but yeah the approach is little older school, but definitely with some of the newer twists. You know, all of the above. I don't know if one's more than the other. I haven't heard enough of it yet. We haven't gone into too much pre-production for me to verify that.

Metal Sucks: So you haven't heard all of what they'd finished?

Joey Belladonna: No.

Metal Sucks: That's kinda interesting. I'm surprised by that. It seems like it will be a tough record to release because it's going to be so totally scrutinized.

Joey Belladonna: Oh yeah. It's gonna be one of those things. About your question earlier, about reservations about things — that's the third thing. Maybe not in that order. It sucks that you're in this line of fire where it's like "He did this, he was that" … who cares. He did that, now I'm back. I do what I do, and he did what he did. He's different, I'm different, and that's it. It stinks when you gotta be held to a certain standard. John might've had the same [experience]. I don't know. It's something that I really didn't have to do early on. You are who you are. If you like the band, you like the way we do things, then cool. But now you got "Well, I liked it when he…" and all that [groans]. I have to disregard a lot of it, because you know what? I can only do what I do and hopefully they dig it.

Read the entire interview from Metal Sucks.