ANTHRAX's 'Worship Music' Gets Tentative Release Date; 'Rockline' Appearance Scheduled

"Worship Music", the long-awaited new album from ANTHRAX, is tentatively due in the U.S. on September 13 via Megaforce Records (one day earlier in Europe through Nuclear Blast Records).

To promote the new CD, ANTHRAX will guest on the nationally syndicated radio show "Rockline" with host Bob Coburn on Monday, September 12 at 8:30 p.m. PT / 11:30 p.m. ET. Fans are encouraged to speak with ANTHRAX by calling 1-800-344-ROCK (7625).

For more information, visit RocklineRadio.com.

"Worship Music", which was originally supposed to be released in 2009 and be the band's first CD with singer Dan Nelson, will mark the first new ANTHRAX recording to feature vocalist Joey Belladonna in 20 years.

"Some of the songs we tweaked, some of the songs we did more than tweak," ANTHRAX drummer Charlie Benante told Revolver magazine. "Some we started from scratch, and some were written just for this album."

"With Joey singing them, they sound like classic ANTHRAX. The hair on my arms stood up when he started singing them. It was ANTHRAX once again."

Guitarist Scott Ian agreed. "The songs like sound like metal. They sound like ANTHRAX circa 1987 through a 2011 filter."

"I think this record is more of a celebration for us," Benante added. "We haven't had a new record since 2003. The ups and downs in between really reflect the mood of this record. There is a lot of aggression, emotion and power. I feel like this is once again back to our New York style and attitude."

In a recent interview with SoundSpike.com, Benante elaborated on the difficulties ANTHRAX encountered while trying to complete the new CD.

"This is years in the making," he said. "It's finally at the end stages of it all. I'm very happy. This record is like a labor of love in all the different ways that it took to get here a lot of blood, a lot of sweat, a lot of tears. It's very emotional to get to this point. Nothing's fabricated here. It's all based on truth." He added, "The ANTHRAX car was driving through peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. Sometimes we just couldn't get out of the valleys. Finally, we went in for a tune-up, and now it's running really well. We're trying to stay up in the peaks. There were so many things that went into this record that made it special. There were so many other things going into it that were not special. We needed to make this record as special as possible. Certain personalities interfered. This record is probably the most emotional record that we've ever had to make."

Songtitles set to appear on "Worship Music" include "Fight 'Em 'Til You Can't", "I'm Alive", "Crawl", "The Giant", "Earth On Hell" and "Down Goes The Sun".

During a chat with RockMusicStar.com, ANTHRAX singer Joey Belladonna was asked if working on the band's new songs was a challenge because of the fact that most of the material was written for previous vocalist, Dan Nelson. "I kind of hate that someone was already singing this stuff and now I have to kind of dance around it and do it all over," he said. "They [the rest of ANTHRAX] have in their mind already how they want it to sound, so it's kind of hard to shake it away. They are not going to say to me, 'Go on and do something totally different and we will just dig it.' [Laughs] It's hard, but I'm not worried about it."

Video footage of ANTHRAX's Scott Ian tracking guitars for the band's new song "Fight 'Em 'Til You Can't" with Jay Ruston can be viewed below.

ANTHRAX performed "Fight 'Em 'Til You Can't" with Belladonna for the first time during the October 8, 2010 concert at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York as part of the Jgermeister Music Tour with SLAYER and MEGADETH. Watch fan-filmed video footage of the performance below.