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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