Worship Music

Arguably the bottom rung of The Big Four—which includes Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth—Anthrax has always been one of the looser, more adventurous bands of the thrash pack. They were one of the first—for better or for worse—to fuse metal with hip-hop with their early collabs with Public Enemy. And while their metalli-brethren rarely cracked smiles, the members of Anthrax have never taken themselves too seriously. Three (!) decades in and Anthrax is still stomping. This 10th album has been almost a decade in the making, during which time Anthrax shuffled through vocalists before bringing OG frontman Joey Belladonna back into the fold for the first time since 1990’s Persistence of Time. The result is an inspired blizzard of riffs and double-kick that slays anything ’tallica, ’deth, or ’thrax themselves for that matter, have done in the last 20 years. These big galoots respect their thrashy past while living comfortably in the now. “Fight ’em ’Til You Can’t” spins a zombie tale with the proper apocalyptic soundtrack, and “The Giant” and “Judas Priest” could serve as templates for modern thrash. Even though Anthrax likely always will be considered the lesser band, Worship Music undisputedly proves it deserves higher ranking in The Big Four.