Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Coffin Shaker: Anthrax – Volume 8: The Threat Is Real




Summer is here and the Coffin, despite what appearances may suggest, is bustling with activity. A full slate of articles are in the works, and a ton of pictures have been taken, with a lineup of figures to be photo’d awaiting. There’s also a spate of records that I want to look over. But, rather than do any of those things right now, I want to talk about Anthrax’s 1998 album, Volume 8.

Anthrax is the member of the “Big 4” that probably shouldn’t be there. Honest to god, I don’t mean that as an insult or a slight. While Anthrax was indeed one of the original Thrash metal bands they were also the quickest to divest from that league and start doing things differently; again, not a slight. Their debut Fistful of Metal with the exception of the classic jam “Deathrider” is more a NWOBHM record than a fully formed Thrash piece, and of course, to the chagrin of many at the time, Anthrax was first to deviate from the formula with the rap/metal combo effort “Bring the Noise” with Public Enemy. While the band did issue some undisputed Thrash classics with efforts like Among the Living and Spreading the Disease, the New Yorkers were also the first to shift gears for more crossover pastures with State of Euphoria and then into groovier territories in the 1990s. This is only my opinion, but a band like Exodus would probably fit better as the fourth Big, while Anthrax I think gets that seat because of chronological seniority.

But anyway.


I lost Anthrax during the 90’s. The John Bush era, while I have nothing personal against it, offered not much more than singles to me. I’ve recently undertaken an effort to become more familiar with the 90’s offerings of the band and the one album that I already had a good amount of familiarity with is Volume 8. I remember liking this album many, many years ago, after having found it one afternoon in a used CD store down the street from my university.

Volume 8 boasts a pair of really great tracks in “Crush” and “Inside Out,” both of which are heavy and excellent songs. There’s a decent slate of B-team tracks as well, like “Catharsis,” “P & V,” “Hog Tied,” “Killing Box” and “Alpha Male”. There’s a pair of throwaway goof off numbers in “604” and “Cupajoe”; the former is a shame, because, worked into a full, serious song it would have been good, as the riff it showcases is probably the fastest and thrashiest on the album, but instead serves as a 50 second, S.O.D. style joke. Strange, country-ish “A Toast to the Extras” is . . . there. Anthrax always did enjoy humor, and that’s totally fine. It worked for the aforementioned S.O.D. and Nuclear Assault (a CRIMINALLY underappreciated band). That’s ten songs right there, and there are 15 on the album. That’s Volume 8’s biggest problem.

Two good songs, five decent to ok songs, a weird one and a pair of throwaways could constitute a decent album, particularly one released by a band in the late 90’s whose heyday was in the 1980’s. This is Volume 8’s real problem: it’s not the groove metal/Pantera/nu metal stylings, or even a distance from the 80’s classics. The problem is the album is too long. The mid to late 90’s are an unpopular era in the Anthrax legacy, as it is for most of the 80’s Thrash bands, but this is not a bad album so much as its length exposes its “pretty good” status and threatens to pull it down towards mediocrity. The total run time of the album is only an hour, and none of the songs on it are terribly bad or offensive, and the album isn’t so long time-wise that it becomes burdensome or anything like that. But the amount of songs make the album drag. Or at least it feels that way. Nothing on here is a necessary or mandatory skip, and a start to finish listen is generally pleasant. Overall the record moves from track to track, providing various degrees of merit.

The sound is all pretty good, with the guitars being a bit thicker than the Thrash metal standard, giving some tracks a real grinding, sonic heaviness that is decried by some as being that nu/groove metal trait that makes music of that type completely isolated from the rest of the metal spectrum. It’s that guitar sound that makes people deride the 90’s output of Overkill and Testament and Anthrax and others as trendhopping to follow Pantera; for Volume 8 this is complicated by the guest appearance of Dimebag Darrell, whose sound doesn’t exactly jump out of the mix, so similar is the general guitar sound on the album. Jon Bush does a solid job vocally and the rhythm section does just fine. The lyrics at times are plain old dumb, kind of making me wince for a second, but they don’t not work for the songs. You know what I mean. There are cool moments on the record, where drums and bass do something just a bit different for a second or two, and they really catch your ear before they vanish back into a simpler, more linear songwriting than 80’s Thrash. Kind of more intricate than 90’s mainstream metal, but noticeably and immediately flatter, mostly lacking in wild solos and lively riffs.

I have pretty vivid memories of putting this CD in my Discman and walking west from the Addison Red Line stop (Wrigley Field, for you non-Chicagoans) rather than waiting for  CTA bus that seemingly never came in the winter of 1998 and really enjoying it. I hadn’t paid much attention to the preceding albums and this one had caught me by surprise. I’d seen the Twilight Zone inspired video for “Inside Out,” Scott and Jon aping the classic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. It was a weird time in my life, and the long walks in winter evening dark, smoking a lot of cigarettes and listening to music always did me good. And I just don’t understand the amount of hate that the 80’s bands got for changing in the 90’s. Long before the proliferation of Internet hyperbole and hatred for pretty much everything, fans across the scene would argue the merits of changing lanes, and how much this meant bands had sold out. I’ve always found this idea stupid: bands do whatever they want to do, and really don’t have any obligation to you to always do what you like. Anthrax seemed to know this earlier than most of their peers, and never heeded the cries against them doing so. Most bands aren’t going to write Spreading the Disease again and again for 30 years, and that’s really alright.

So maybe Volume 8 is 90’s Anthrax. It could have been worse, as we know from most mainstream 90’s metal. It could have been better, but it isn’t bad.

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