ANTHRAX frontman Joey Belladonna was recently interviewed by Papatomski.com, where he talks about his return to the band (which he left in 1992) and their latest album “Worship Music”, which was released last September.
Congratulations on a successful comeback for both you and the band. For you it’s the third stint with Anthrax. How does it feel to be back and what is different this time?
It feels really great! We have a good camaraderie in the band right now and everybody is working together. What’s different is that we don’t take things for granted and we are really committed. We don’t want to waste this time, because you never know when you might have such a great lineup together again. We feel that we have something special going. We write good music and the shows are as great as ever. We really enjoy ourselves right now.
Despite all that positivity the [new Anthrax album,”Worship Music”] was not born painlessly. First it was to feature [vocalist] Dan Nelson, then John Bush, who openly admitted that “it conflicted him, since he was not a part of creating it.” Why did you say yes?
I always thought that we should do it when we had a good enough reason for it. It took a long time for that to happen and to be honest with you I don’t even know where all that time went. But at the same time I don’t have any bad feelings. We finally got on the same page and once we decided to make it right it was easy enough from then on.
Back to lead vocalists — you have a history of frequent changes at your this role. Why is this so?
I couldn’t really tell you that. It’s a big mystery to me as well. All I know is that it had nothing to do with me since I never wanted to make any changes. But even though it is hard to be on the other end of it, I don’t like to go there anymore. I try not to think about what happened, concentrate on what we have and good music that we produce. Right now we have what we need and what it takes to forget about the past.
But these changes did not always fair well with your fans, who at one time held a “Bring Back Bush” campaign. What do you say to them? Will they have a reason to miss John?
I don’t know anything about the campaign, but I also don’t care about him. I have never even met him. We both are different and have our own unique styles, so maybe at that time it was what the band needed. But I am not going to dwell on it since I don’t have any control over what happened in the past. Right now we are flying high and there is plenty of things for me focus on.
You can read the rest of the interview here.
ANTHRAX live:
