In every heavy metal band the members are not equally replaceable. For some it will be more difficult to change the singer or a lead guitarist, and one could then counter by naming “rhythm players” as Dave Lombardo or Les Claypool. For others it will be more difficult to replace the composer. Pantera, as I wrote about Power Metal, they hit the target, for example, completing with the right singer a lineup whose potential was already crazy. As the author of an article on Anthrax which ended with the Belladonna era, I would like to reiterate today how apt the move was to insert John Bush at the microphone following the release of Attack of the Killer B’s. Leaving aside how incorrect were Anthrax with John Bush a decade ago and beyond, neither Belladonna nor he is “Anthrax singer” : they are both with equal merit, and neither of them would have done better than the other in the recording tranche that each was entitled to. Only John Bush would have deserved to keep his vocals on Worship Music and, we know, it went differently.
As a kid I stumbled upon this video clip entitled Only. I wasn’t even a metalhead and I recognized him in his frames the terrifying face of Frank SilvaBob’s Twin Peaks. Anthrax intrigued me and, four or five years later, I would go around the center of Florence wearing an Anthrax t-shirt. State of Euphoria.
Few argue that Sound of White Noise it’s a bad album. There are those who say it’s too long and in fact up to that point every Anthrax album had been longer than the previous one. From thirty-five minutes of Fistful of Metal at the net hour of Persistence of Time, and the reverse began in 1993, with a few minutes less. It was still too much but at the time the record companies reveled in these delays because the CD format had completely replaced the old cassette.
There are those who say that the album could never have been conceived in the absence of the tidal wave caused by Black Album. I think, actually, there was no way for thrash metal to go anywhere else at the time. Its natural evolution involved slowing down and simplifying everything, ending up generating certain fringes of alternative metal that would get a good share of television and radio exposure in the years to come.
Whatever voice you decide to listen to, Sound of White Noise it contained one of the most generational songs of those years, in fact Only. Name ten and she will certainly be present, just as a German metalhead would name out of pride Phobia and someone who pays attention to numbers and to the passages made by DJs in the clubs would name Walk And Roots Bloody Roots or something precisely from Black Album.
On the comparison with Metallica’s best seller, the strong influence exerted at the time by Elektra Records, the major label for which Anthrax had just signed, must be mentioned. The contract with Island ended with the publication of Attack of the Killer B’sthe one of the much talked about Bring the Noise. Elektra was categorical about the accessibility of the songs that Anthrax would have to compose in the future and this generated the disagreements with Joey Belladonna and the timely replacement of him with the then singer of Armored Saint. The latter were also not considered one safe shipwith the premature death of Dave Prichard at the dawn of the nineties and the out-of-time release of an album like Symbol of Salvation, beautiful, underrated, edgy and incredibly 80s. Curiously Dave Jerden produced both albums, Symbol of Salvation and two years later Sound of White Noise. If his name tells you something, it’s probably because he produced between the two Dirt by Alice in Chains.
Joey Belladonna behind John Bush, ready for more than just a prostate exam (2010)
The mood of those years, dominated by grunge, Sound of White Noise he took it all with him. Black Lodge in particular, the album’s slow track, one of the four or five most successful songs, suited John Bush’s tone perfectly. Very little remained of the typical performance speed of the band’s past. The sound was once again full-bodied as in Persistence of Timecompletely detaching itself from the typical canons of the Eighties. C11 H127 N2 O2 Na the moment of greatest determination and exaltation of Charlie Benante’s grooves, This is Not an Exit the other hidden gem in the talkative second half, together with the tremolo picking used inappropriately in 1000 Points of Hate. For the rest Sound of White Noise suffered from a certain gap between side A and side B, with the opening trio closed by the marvelous one Room for One More as an absolute peak.
For the undersigned Sound of White Noise it was the last possible evolution for Anthrax’s sound. We’ve Come for You All And Worship Music the last interesting chapters of their career, once the game is over. I love it, I lose a third of the setlist completely out of focus, I consider it a fundamental piece of my adolescence and metalhead education. And it’s the last one with Dan Spitz, ladies and gentlemen. Straight from an era where musicians got the most, or almost, even when they had to sell their asses. (Marco Belardi)
