Late in 2013, Anthrax were already in the studio working with producer Jay Ruston on new material. The band took a bit of a break over the holidays, but will soon be heading back to work on vocals.
Guitarist Scott Ian checked in with our friends at Metal Insider about the progress of the album:
It’s really coming along. It’s crazy to think that we’re already in January of this year, it seems like we just finished touring in August and we said decided to start writing again. We decided not to take a break and we’re jumping right in because everyone felt we could. We’re sitting here right now with 12 songs musically arranged and really focusing on lyrics now.
At the end of the month after the NAMM show is the next time we’re getting together at Jay’s studio to work on vocals. I like to think at the pace we’re going we would be ready to start recording maybe in April. I hate to ever put a stamp on something like this because you just never know.
But where we’re at musically right now, this shit is just so killer. It’s not like we have that far to go. Sometimes as a band when we’re writing – and I’m sure this happens to other bands too – you could sit down and listen to where you’re at and think ‘this stuff is good, but maybe there’s too much mid tempo stuff, or we don’t really have an album opener yet.’ There are just certain ways you listen to it in the context of how are to sequence and pace it, things like that.
I think we’ve got all our bases covered and we’re ready. If we come out with some better shit in the next couple of months that’s awesome, but the 12 things we have musically so far we’re really happy with. Things came together really fast for us and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we just came off such a good run with Worship Music.
We were all really excited about getting back in a room and writing songs together, and it was the first time in a really long time that we weren’t going into writing a record coming off a really shitty time (laughs). So for us to have come off such a great run with Worship Music, we were all really excited about it and I think it really shows in the music.
As for how it compares to their previous release, Worship Music:
It definitely hearkens back to more of who we were in the 80s, yet at the same time sounding like us now in present day, which is what a lot of people said about Worship Music. I think this one hits even harder and faster, more brutal with crazier riffs. We were all super inspired coming in and working with Charlie and Frankie in the room, and then having Jay [Ruston, producer] in the room with us as well, has been amazing because he really pushes us.
Head over to Metal Insider for the rest of the interview, which features Scott discussing his spoken word tour and being a talking head on Vh1.
