Sound of white noise --- Anthrax --- 1993 (Elektra)
Another giant in the Thrash Metal arena, Anthrax have been around for over twenty years now, and indeed their debut "Fistful of metal", was an early purchase of mine and I loved it. This is their sixth album, almost ten years later, and featuring not Joey Belladonna, beloved of the Batlord, but John Bush, who would stay with the band for three more albums up to 2003. I haven't heard this one, but it's said to show a different side of Anthrax with a change of direction musically. Does it then belong here? Let's see.
"Potter's Field", the opener, despite sharing a title with a Tom Waits song, is not a cover of that track but their own composition, and opens with a very English cultured voice remarking "This is a journey into sound". There then follows some sort of ambient noise until Dan Spitz's guitar hammers into the tune, then Bush comes in but I must say, heavy though the song is it has an unmistakable hip-hop rhythm to it, this possibly confirmed by "scratching" on a later track. It's Anthrax, Jim, but not (quite) as we know them. A decent song though and I would harbour the hope Bush is not going to bring rapping to this, one of the "big four" thrash bands.
"Only" has a good hammering drumbeat from Charlie Benante and some powerful solid guitar, and John Bush is certainly a strong singer, but I have to wonder does this still qualify as thrash metal? It's a bit, how you say,
melodic? Still heavy as hell but rather catchier than I would expect from a band of Anthrax's reputation. Hmm. Well, "Room for one more" has more of the hard punching sound we've come to expect from the guys, with some fine soaraway guitar. Nevertheless, the vocal still puts me in mind of what a metal rapper would sound like, if such a thing existed. I know Limp Bizkit exist: I said if a
metal rapper existed! Holy hell! Is that a version of the "Magic Roundabout" theme opening "Packaged rebellion", or is it just me? Just me then.
Yeah this is more like it. It's like ZZ and Bad Company got together and invited Lizzy along for the ride. Good old-school heavy metal with some great guitar licks and what I'd consider a proper metal vocal this time round. My worries were fading about the influence of hip-hop on the album but they're kind of back a little with the rap-style vocal on "Hy pro glo", though it's still a heavy song certainly. Great staccato guitar that punches like a studded fist, John Bush sounding a little like Ozzy on occasion! There's a real heads-down, kick-it-out fretfest then in "Invisible", really gets the blood pumping, while the freight train gathers speed and hurtles down the track as "1000 points of hate" rattles by, and at this point you'd have to admit John Bush is a decent replacement for our man Joey.
There are synthesisers, of all things, on "Black lodge", wherein the band enlist the services of composer Angelo Badlamenti, who I know best for the theme music to "Twin Peaks", and it's the first, probably only, ballad, the title itself based on a location in that TV series. It's not so much a ballad really, but for Anthrax it's about as slow as it's likely to get, with definite grunge influences in the melody and rhythm. It's good but very reserved for Anthrax and just doesn't really suit their sound. I'm not going to write down the chemical formula that forms the title for the next song, so I'll use the actual name, Sodium Pentathol, which is of course also known as truth serum. It gets things rocking and racing again, back to the kind of Anthrax I grew up with. One of Bush's best vocal performances on the album: he's absolutely manic!
That just leaves two tracks to close with. "Burst", the shortest track on the album at just over three and a half minutes, opens with an odd little synthesiser "chime", then thunders along on galloping drums and sharp guitar with a growling backing vocal thrown into the mix. The album ends with a nod to the movie "American psycho" (which I personally hated) as the boys warn "This is not an exit", a sort of a slower grinder with heavy feedback guitar reminding me rather a lot of Metallica. It's quite long for a closer, in fact the shortest track is followed by the longest, as this just falls short of seven minutes. It's a good grindy, snarly way to finish the album and it speeds up as it nears its climax, ending in something of a cacophony of noise, with a (to me) pointless little sound sample tacked on right at the end.
TRACKLISTING
1. Potter's Field
2. Only
3. Room for one more
4. Packaged rebellion
5. Hy pro glo
6. Invisible
7. 1000 points of hate
8. Black Lodge
9. Sodium Pentathol
10. Burst
11. This is not an exit
There are definitely new influences leaking in on this album --- vestiges of hip-hop as I already mentioned, and which will probably be laughed at for, and grunge too --- but "Sound of white noise" is still a major heavy album. John Bush brings something different to the sound of Anthrax, and there are some surprises here, but basically it's still the same band I learned to love and who helped teach me to headbang way back in 1984.
I don't headbang anymore --- no hair, you see, or at least not the luscious mane I had in my teens --- but I can still be rocked. And this album rocks me. Still deserving of their place among the big four, even after all this time.
Read more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_%28band%29