A Message of Love Hidden in Imagery of War : Pop music: Anthrax has long used war as a cathartic metaphor for youthful inner turmoil and societal conflict.

Anthrax isn’t the only speed-metal band on the playlists of Operation Desert Storm soldiers. Slayer’s apocalyptic firestorms are reportedly being used by military trainers to pump up troops preparing for battle.

But Anthrax--which will open for Iron Maiden at the Long Beach Arena tonight and Friday, and which is nominated for the heavy-metal Grammy award tonight--may be the only one whose songs are meant to bring comfort and solace, and even love.

“We said in one song that it’s easier to hate someone than love,” said drummer-composer Charlie Benante, 27, reflecting on the emotions both of war and another favorite Anthrax topic, racism. “It’s so cool to hate somebody. It’s hard to show the emotion of love because if you do it makes you look like a (wimp).”

War has long figured in Anthrax’s music. The Manhattan-based group, which helped pioneer speed-metal in the early ‘80s, has long used war imagery as a cathartic metaphor for youthful inner turmoil and societal conflict. At times it’s been balanced with Mad magazine-type humor (notably the 1987 rap-metal milestone “I’m the Man”). But its latest album, “Persistence of Time,” portrays a bleak battleground of emotions and ideas.

Still, when the album was recorded last year, war was an abstract concept for the band. Now it’s real, something Anthrax sees not just on CNN but in the faces of the group’s fans--and in the absence of some of those faces.

“There’s a percentage of our audience not at our shows because of it, especially here in the South,” said Benante, calling from a Ft. Lauderdale tour stop.

“We met a bunch of kids in Germany recently who were going in two days to the desert. Just kids ! You could see it in their faces that they were scared. And there are a bunch of them out there now. We were just saying the other night that there’s probably someone right now sitting in the desert listening to one of our songs and saying, ‘Damn, Anthrax is probably playing in my hometown.’ ”

He paused. “I’m glad they have the music for company.”

Benante said he expects people to be surprised that his furious, relentless music is a vehicle for social compassion.

“One kid from Detroit earned an Eagle Scout badge from one of our songs, ‘Who Cares When?’ ” he said. “The song’s about the homeless, and he said that it inspired him to go out and raise money and food for a homeless shelter. We spent a day with him a couple of weeks ago. He’s just a normal kid who went out of his way to do something.

“Stuff like that doesn’t get reported,” he continued. “If the kid had gone out and killed somebody and blamed a heavy-metal song, it would have been all over the place.”

Ever since it began, Anthrax has eschewed the hard-rock stereotypes. Like fellow pioneer Metallica, it rejected flashy clothes for jeans and T-shirts. And the flirtations with rap (a version of Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” is going to be released soon on the EP “Attack of the Killer B’s,” a collection of B-side recordings) were pretty daring in the days before Faith No More hit platinum with a rap-metal hybrid.

Benante wonders about the bands that take the more conventional metal posture.

“That whole bad-boy image,” Benante said. “It is kind of irresponsible. It’s your name on there. Some of the rap and metal bands, the things they come across with. . . . To me, it’s immature before it’s irresponsible. They’re writing about stupid things anyway. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with something like that going out. It’s not us.”

Nonetheless, Benante reveals a certain amount of petulance and selfishness about the war, which he blames in part for Anthrax’s failure thus far to leap to the level where it would be headlining U.S. arenas, not opening shows.

“Oh boy! I thought this album would be the big break for us,” he said of “Persistence,” which has sold more than 500,000, but hasn’t reached the heights of Metallica or Faith No More. “But, of course, every time we put something out, there’s something wrong with the economy. We go on tour and there has to be a war. Everything works against us.”