Description

10 on red vinyl

Anthems in an six-track ep that pays tribute to the classic songs by some of the band’s favorite acts from the 1970s. Said Anthrax vocalist Joey Belladonna, These are all bands I grew up with and have listened to forever. It’s just great music. I had fun singing these songs and I was happy recording together with Anthrax, doing classic rock songs. Fun stuff On Bostons Smokin, Anthrax brought in a special guest to play keyboards Fred Mandel, who has played with Alice Cooper, Queen, Elton John to name a few. About the track, drummer Charlie Benante said, If ever there were a perfect first album, it’s Bostons first album. The harmony leads they did would later be heard by Iron Maiden, which, of course, would lead to thrash metal. It was a lot of fun, especially because a lot of those [songs] aren’t, I guess, normal for us or like so much of our repertoire although they are because they’re songs we all knew, guitarist Scott Ian told Billboard.com. Maybe on paper the idea of us doing something like that seems weird, until you hear them and then it makes sense. And Joey’s performance on the Journey song, specifically, really blows my mind. Someone mentioned that [Journey guitarist] Neal Schon better not hear this or we might lose our singer. Asked how the band selected which songs to cover, Ian said, Like everything else, it’s kind of like someone says a song and everyone else is like, ‘Yeah, that’s a good one.’ It’s really as simple as that. It’s songs that in some shape or form we’ve been playing or jamming on for our whole lives. Because you really don’t wanna have to work too hard on these things, although the Rush song is a bit of a bitch; I can’t say that’s an easy one. But it’s a song we all know and we’re all familiar with, so then, of course, you take on the challenge of just really trying to nail it and do it justice. According to Anthrax, they paid particular attention to the cover of Rush’s Anthem in order to recreate the nuances of the original song. I have to get every little part of Geddy [Lee, Rush bassist/vocalist] down, ’cause I’m a fanatic with that stuff, and I have to, bassist Frank Bello said. Its great. I love it. Added Scott: Charlie [Benante, Anthrax drummer] bumped into [Rush drummer] Neil Peart at the [Revolver] Golden Gods Awards a few months ago, and Neil actually said to Charlie, ‘Yeah, we heard you guys are covering ‘Anthem’. That’s so cool. We put the clip of you playing drums [to the song] up on our web site.’ And Charlie, I swear to God, he was like, the light, the glow that was coming off him after that was I’d never seen anything quite like it.

Track listing:
1. Anthem-Rush cover
2. TNT-Ac/dc cover
3. Smokin-Boston cover
4. Keep On Runnin-Journey cover
5. Big Eyes-Cheap Trick cover
6. Jailbreak-Thin Lizzy cover