ANTHRAX will play the grand reopening of Saint Vitus Bar on Friday, September 4, at the venue's new Brooklyn location — 428 Troutman Street in Bushwick, the onetime home of Brooklyn Made. The band will film the entire show.
"NEW YORK CITY. We're honored to be performing at the grand re-opening of the legendary Saint Vitus Bar on September 4th," the band said. "We'll be filming the entire show, capturing every intimate moment. Bring the mosh and live forever with us in the histories of New York Thrash."
The venue being reopened has a real place in the city's heavy music history. Saint Vitus opened in 2011 as a 250-capacity room and spent thirteen years hosting everyone from local hardcore bands to unannounced sets by members of NIRVANA, BLINK-182, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX themselves. It closed abruptly in February 2024, mid-hardcore-show, when the Department Of Buildings determined it lacked the proper permits to operate as a live music venue and shut the doors on the spot.
For ANTHRAX the geography is not incidental. Scott Ian and then-bassist Dan Lilker formed the band in Queens on July 18, 1981, and it became one of the first East Coast thrash bands to reach the level of METALLICA, SLAYER and MEGADETH. A filmed club show in Brooklyn, two weeks before a new album, is about as pointed a piece of hometown staging as the band could arrange.
That album is "Cursum Perficio", out September 18 via Megaforce in the U.S. and Nuclear Blast in Europe. It is ANTHRAX's twelfth full-length and their first in ten years, following 2016's "For All Kings", which debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200. The Latin title translates as "my journey has come to an end" — or, more precisely, "I complete my journey".
The band began recording in earnest in 2022 at Dave Grohl's Studio 606 in Los Angeles, working slowly and mining their own history in the process. Jay Ruston produced alongside the band.
The release will be spread across an unusually deep run of variants: a standard CD, a Target-exclusive CD with a fabric patch of the album cover, and a long list of double LPs with pop-up gatefolds — standard black, plus Target red zoetrope, Amazon purple zoetrope, merch-exclusive lilac, Metal Injection white, a signed Talk Shop Live red ripple pressing and an indie-exclusive red, orange and yellow edition.
Tickets for the Saint Vitus show went on sale Friday, August 28.