Anthrax--Thrashing for Metal Money

Anthrax is a malignant infectious disease. It’s also the name of a speed-metal band that, in some circles, is treated like a disease.

Speed metal--or thrash metal--is the black sheep of the heavy-metal family. Even regular metal bands turn up their noses at speed metalists.

Scott Ian, the rhythm guitarist of Anthrax, chuckled as he contemplated his band’s lowly image. He’s heard these jibes so often that they don’t even faze him any more. Anthrax doesn’t get any respect and he doesn’t really care.

“You either like this music or you don’t,” he explained. “It’s funny that people spend so much time putting it down. Most of them don’t even know what they’re talking about.”

What he does care about, however, is building the band’s audience and selling records. Normally, this is accomplished through airplay. But radio largely ignores speed metal. If Anthrax is lucky, it’ll get some play on a few college stations and maybe a rock station here and there.

But speed metal really isn’t meant for radio. It’s not melodious, it’s played at a blazing pace and the lyrics are rarely discernable. Also it doesn’t have a low gear. It’s always in overdrive. For many pop fans, that makes it an automatic turn-off. If you’re not into speed metal, you’re likely to find it grating and screechy.

Anthrax, like its speed-metal peers Megadeth and Metallica, builds its audience through touring. Currently, Anthrax, which just played the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa, is on tour with Kiss. It’s one of the oddest bills of the year--almost like L. L. Cool J. opening for Neil Diamond.

Anthrax’s audience--aggressive, blue-collar teen-aged boys--clashes sharply with the the older, comparatively sedate glam-metal followers of Kiss. Ian expects some real clashes at certain concerts. “In some of the big cities, there’ll be fighting in the audience,” he predicted. “I hope it doesn’t get too bad.”

Anthrax was formed in July, 1981, in New York and then suffered through growing pains and personnel changes for the next two years. “We always wanted to be a heavy-metal band,” said Ian, a Bronx native who was inspired to learn guitar after watching a Pete Townshend performance in the early ‘70s. “We always loved playing hard and fast. To us that’s what metal is all about.”

The band’s first album--”Fistful of Metal,” on the Megaforce label--is a forgettable mishmash of rough edges and lame vocals. With the original vocalist the band was headed nowhere. But a new singer, Joey Belladona, was hired in time for the next album, the band’s Island Records debut, “Spreading the Disease,” which came out in 1985. Belladona’s not just a screecher--there’s feeling and appealing ferociousness in his screaming. Also, the music took on another thunderous dimension, partly thanks to bassist Frank Bello, another replacement.

But Anthrax revved up to new levels of speed and power on “Among the Living,” released a year ago. The band is about to come to the end of an exhaustive, year-long tour. “Playing live is necessary for us,” Ian explained. “That’s how we get new fans and sell records. We can’t rely on radio for help.”

There are signs that Anthrax is winning this uphill battle. “Spreading the Disease” has sold 200,000 in three years. But “Among the Living” has sold twice as many in just a year, and a new EP featuring the rap-metal single “I’m the Man” is currently No. 73 on Billboard’s album chart. Hot pop-metal bands like Bon Jovi and Whitesnake, who get extensive airplay, can sell more than a 100,000 records in a month. But for a speed-metal band that relies almost exclusively on concert exposure, the Anthrax sales figures are quite respectable.

Incidentally, Anthrax holds no grudge against pop-metal bands that are selling millions of units during the current metal boom.

“They’re helping us,” Ian explained. “If a Bon Jovi fan picks up a copy of Circus (a heavy-metal magazine) because Bon Jovi is on the cover, there may be a story about us inside. That fan may be inspired to check out our album. Whoever brings attention to metal helps all of us.”

Bands like Bon Jovi, Ian pointed out, which are noted for their handsome, sexy members, have attracted females to metal: “A few years ago we’d be lucky to have a few girls at our shows. Now there are lots of them. Those pop-metal bands have brought in the women to metal. I can’t complain about that.”

The Anthrax lineup currently consists of Ian, Belladona, Bello, lead guitarist Dan Spitz and drummer Charlie Benante. All are New Yorkers in their mid-20s. Ian writes the lyrics while Benante composes most of the music.

A fascinating aspect of Anthrax’s material is that, unlike the bulk of metal, it’s not sexist. “I don’t understand why girls are into bands like Motley Crue and Poison,” Ian said. “They’re grossly sexist. Half the time they’re putting women down in their lyrics. I guess there are a lot of women who like being put down.

“But we made a conscious decision not to do that. We stay away from singing about women and sex and all that. Thousands of other bands are doing that all the time--singing about the same thing. How many times can you write about girls and sex and have it be original? It’s ridiculous--the same lines over and over. I’d rather be original and avoid the sex and women thing altogether.”

Ian gets many of his themes from books and current events. “I love to read books and newspapers and I watch a lot of TV,” he said. “That may come as a surprise to a lot of people who don’t think someone who plays this kind of music would also be a reader. I get ideas from books and news. Look at some of the songs on the ‘Among the Living’ album. ‘One World’ came from the summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev in Iceland. The idea for ‘Indians’ came from a Time magazine article on Indians in South Dakota.”

But Ian also gets ideas from low-brow sources: Some of the books he reads are comics. “I read all the Marvel and DC stuff,” he said proudly. “I love X-Men, Batman, Superman, Daredevil. But my favorite is Love and Rockets, which is a soap opera. All my reading can’t be serious. You gotta have fun, too.”

The band members do have fun on the road--but not the kind of fun you’d expect. “We’re not a wild party band,” Ian insisted. “We’re not into drugs and we’re not heavy into alcohol. The only person in the band who might go out and get drunk more than once in two weeks is Joey. He’s the only one who’d go out and have more than five beers.”

Not a very glamorous image. In fact, many of their fans would consider these guys squares. “Let’s face it,” Ian said. “A lot of our fans are doing drugs and drinking a lot. But that doesn’t mean we have to do it. If they think we’re too conservative, that’s their problem. If they don’t like us because they don’t think we’re glamorous enough--and they think drugs and alcohol are glamorous--they can go to hell.”

But don’t nominate the Anthrax members for sainthood just yet. They’re not good all the time. “We’ve been known to trash things in hotels,” Ian confessed. “Well, like I said, you gotta have some fun.”