Thrash Titans Anthrax Make Their Long‑Awaited Australian Comeback
Anthrax are about to headline in Australia for the first time since 2005 this month. Charlie Benanate, drummer and chief song writer in the New York thrash legends, takes time to talk about his bands upcoming Australian tour, the new album ten years in the making, his moonlighting in Pantera, the New York metal scene and the impact Jaws had on his life.
‘Everything’s been really good. I just got home from this three-week Canadian run. It was us, Megadeth and Exodus doing a run across Canada. The weather was fucking shit, but the fans, the crowds were great!’
Fortunately, the weather in Australia this time is on the hotter side of ‘fucking shit’. It’s the band’s first time back since 2019, and first headliner in twenty one years. How is that possible?
‘I think what happened was we would get offered to play these festivals, and a lot of times you couldn’t do your own headlining shows because promoters don’t want to take away from the festival. So, we got caught up in all that festival type of stuff. I was there a couple of years ago with Pantera, and I remember fans were asking me when is Anthrax coming back and all I could say is hopefully soon. But see, the thing is, our record was supposed to come out in the next month or two, but it’s not coming out. We pushed it back. So that had a lot to do with it as well.’
Ah, the new record. Word of the follow up to 2016’s For All Kings, first surfaced in 2018 however eight years on is still yet to see the light of day, with the latest rumour being May 2026. Is this just another Guns N Roses type situation? Well, Charlie answers.
‘It’s definitely not May. It’s coming out in September, but we will have a song out and video this May.’
So, for fans hoping that they would potentially hear something new on the tour may be a little disappointed, however forty years of classics are more than satisfactory, or could something new be dropped in?
‘We’re playing with the idea of playing something new. It’s like some people feel yeah. Some people are like, “No, let’s wait.” I would love to just burst into something without even saying anything and just kind of do it.’
As it has taken eight years to get to this point, and now the new date is September 2026, one wonders if there is anything Charlie can say to their long-awaiting fans about the new album.
‘Well, I mean, I was told not to talk about the album on these calls because it’s about the tour, I mean, because we haven’t announced anything, a name or whatever, I could tell you that it’s definitely a progression from the last few records. It definitely sounds like Anthrax, but it’s definitely turned it up a notch because there’s some songs on this record that, for me personally, I don’t know if I could have written them ten, fifteen years ago. There’s something that happened, I had this burst of creativity and I love when that happens. The other guys were very, very happy with the stuff. Scott feels like one of these songs is one of the best songs that Anthrax have ever had and I agree with him too, but there’s a lot of moments like that on the record where a song ends and then the next one comes on and it’s like, holy shit, this one’s better than the last one.’
‘I was just talking about the artwork for this record. When a record comes out, there’s no logo on the cover. It’s just a piece of art. There’ll be a sticker that goes on the package, but the word, the name Anthrax doesn’t appear because I didn’t want it to obstruct any of the artwork on this cover because to me, it’s a piece of art and it’s beautiful.’
‘I just don’t know how … See, we love it, but we’re so close to it and it’s only until other people hear it that you can get, “Oh, okay, now you hear what we were hearing.” Two people I know who have heard it, they were just like, “Bro, I was just fucking floored.” I can’t believe at this stage of the game in your career that you’re coming up with this type of stuff. So that made me so happy to hear because I pushed myself so hard to be better than we were, you know what I mean? I don’t see a lot of that in music these days. I don’t see people pushing themselves anymore. I think that’s why it’s, I don’t know, it’s just a stagnant scene. Nothing is really pushing the envelope any more.’
The stagnant music scene for this reviewer stems from the advent of streaming, with singles and online content becoming more important than the art of albums. For Charlie, a veteran next to me, it’s interesting to hear his, brutally New Yorker, take on it.
‘This is going back into maybe the ’90s, late ’90s when bands started to just give away records and music was starting to become disposable. You’re devaluing music by doing this. The whole streaming thing, it killed our business, okay? People don’t talk about that too much, how much of the art was destroyed because of that. No one came to save our business. Nobody did. They just, “Oh, we’re getting all this shit for free now.” I never agreed with it. I think streaming is shit. I think real metal fans, real hard rock fans will go and support the band and buy the fucking vinyl, buy the CD… You know what I mean? Because they love this. I’m the same way. If a band comes out with a record, I’ll go buy it and I’ll put it on my iTunes or whatever you fucking call it these days, but I’m totally against streaming. I don’t give a fuck who you are.’
Last time Charlie was down under was sitting in with Pantera, which afforded him something not often given on these tours, days off to explore.
‘For the first time I had a day off in Sydney, and this is with Pantera though, and Ross Halfin took us out for a photo shoot and we got to see certain parts and it was beautiful. It’s just a beautiful country. It reminds me of the West Coast, there’s just aspects of it that are just so similar to the US. The only problem, the only difference is there’s no Americans there. God, I hate to sound like a dick, but sometimes that’s a great thing! I love my country, but I’m not sure about what’s going on. So, it worries me week by week, it just gets even weirder. For me to come down to Australia and enjoy the people there, enjoy the crowd, enjoy the weather, it’s a different thing. Although it takes a fucking shit long time to get there, but like I said, I just love the people!’
Anthrax are very closely associated with the Big 4 of thrash metal, and are proud New Yorkers, however beneath the surface they sound was quite different from the other three, and New York itself is known to not have an actual metal scene, making the band stand out completely on their own in a world copycats.
‘In New York, dude, there was no real scene at all. For a metal band coming out of New York, there was nobody else. The only bands that we can reference before us was the Ramones, Kiss, Blondie. There was such a scene for that stuff, not Kiss, but Kiss were all on their own. But for us, there was nothing like what was going on in San Francisco, nothing that was going on in LA. We had to create something. And then L’Amour was the place where people would go. That’s where they’d have shows and there was a scene. Before you know it, other bands started to pop out, like Overkill came up and Biohazard was another band. So we started to make some noise and then other people could notice. Then before you know it, there was other bands then, which was great.’
New Yorkers are world known for having a particular way of handling life, something ingrained in the band’s music.
‘One hundred percent. Without even realising it, our attitudes were coming out in our music, our lifestyle was coming out in our music. What we enjoyed was coming out in our music, our personalities were coming out in our music. There was a moment there where people couldn’t understand it because we didn’t look like these other bands. We weren’t gritting our teeth in photos. We were fucking smiling. We were happy. How could we not be happy? We were a band for fucking two, three years and we were getting fame. That’s how ‘State Of Euphoria’ came about. We were in a state of euphoria. We were so happy that we wore it on our sleeves and people couldn’t understand that. They were asking us stupid questions at the time. “Why do you wear these shorts? Why do you smile in pictures?’
Bringing it back to the tour, many people wouldn’t have ever seen Anthrax, so how does Charlie describe their show?
‘We’re going to play their favourite songs. We are going to bring our personalities. We just want everybody to have a great time and walk out going ‘That was fucking rad, man. I enjoyed them so much’, that kind of thing. Just be a part of it.’
As a side quest at the end, Charlie and I delve into movies, classics, with in particular focus on Jaws.
‘It was a time when I was younger and it made such an impression on me that. I’ve always been a horror movie kid since I was very little. And for that movie to come out at that time, it really fucked with my head because I couldn’t go in the water anymore because I didn’t know what was underneath me. It was always that fear of that, of that shark coming up and swallowing me. It still does. If we’re out somewhere and we all go on jet skis or something, I still have that fear.’
‘The beauty of Jaws was, it was a practical effect. Even though it didn’t work as well as they wanted to, it worked just enough to make that movie fuck with us all. That’s how good it was. For me, it’s like, please don’t ever think about remaking Jaws’.
Our conversation digresses into how CGI ruins modern horror movies next to practical effects, however that’s for another time. For this time though, Charlie and Anthrax will be here shortly to rock all our worlds in what promises to be a night of euphoria.
Interview By Iain McCallum
Catch Anthrax on the following dates, tickets from Live Nation…
