Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante has updated us on the songwriting progress for the band’s upcoming album, saying that COVID has put a dent in their original plans.
According to Benante, the forthcoming album – which serves as a follow-up to 2016’s For All Kings – was, like many others, delayed due to the ongoing pandemic.
“We’re still working on the material. Because COVID kind of put a stop on it all, in a sense,” he explained in a new interview with RadioactiveMike Z, host of the 96.7 KCAL-FM radio program Wired In The Empire.
“We didn’t get together, but I was still working on the material.
“We didn’t wanna put a record out during this time because we didn’t it to just get lost and get sucked up in this COVID vacuum,” Benante added.
When asked if Anthrax fans can expect the release to drop sometime in 2022, Benante confirmed: “Yeah. It looks like that, yeah.”
It comes following similar comments from Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, who said in November that he and his fellow Anthrax band members were waiting until they could tour to support the release of the new tunes.
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“That’s where I am personally right at this moment,” he said at the time.
“Six months from now, who knows where the world is gonna be? We don’t know. Maybe things will be closer to being back to normal; maybe they’ll be further away from back to normal.
“Nobody has an answer to this, so anytime someone asks me about that, I really don’t have an answer.”
Ian continued: “In my brain, I don’t wanna put a record out until I can play shows.
“That’s what I wanna do, but, of course, I don’t control the world and I don’t control what’s gonna happen with COVID. I think I can safely say we will certainly be ready to make a record [in 2021]. So I think we will probably go do that once we’re ready to go do it.
“There would be no reason to have a record [written] and then just sit around and not record it. So, I think once we actually feel like we’re ready to go into the studio, we’ll do that, regardless of where things are at on the planet, and then just take it from there.
He added: “At least it’ll be in the can, and then we’ll be able to make a decision on what the best course is for us to take at that point.
“[Everybody is] in the same boat. There are no rules anymore. It’s a completely different playbook, and everybody’s gotta figure out what’s gonna work.”
You can read more about this topic on the Metal Observer.
Check out ‘Got The Time’ by Anthrax:
