ANTHRAX spent Friday night in a room that was not supposed to exist any more, playing songs most of the audience had never heard live.
The show was September 4 at the new Brooklyn address of Saint Vitus Bar — 428 Troutman Street in Bushwick, the former Brooklyn Made. The original Saint Vitus opened in 2011 as a 250-capacity venue and became the place where local hardcore bills and surprise sets by members of NIRVANA, BLINK-182, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX shared a calendar. In February 2024 the Department Of Buildings shut it down in the middle of a hardcore show after determining it had never held the permits to operate as a live music venue.
Reopening it fell to a band with 45 years of New York in them, two weeks out from a new album. Three songs from "Cursum Perficio" got their live debut: "The Edge Of Perfection", "Everybody's Got A Plan" — previously only ever played in part — and "NYC 93", which the band ran twice, playing along to the album version for a music video shoot.
The cover was the surprise. ANTHRAX have been playing TRUST's "Antisocial" and Joe Jackson's "Got The Time" for decades; on Friday they added SICK OF IT ALL's "Clobberin' Time", a first for them, and about as pointed a choice as a New York band can make in a Brooklyn hardcore room.
Two deep cuts also came back after five years away. "Now It's Dark", from 1988's "State Of Euphoria", and "Lone Justice", from 1990's "Persistence Of Time", had not been played since 2021.
The full set ran: "It's For The Kids", "Got The Time", "Madhouse", "Metal Thrashing Mad", "Keep It In The Family", "Now It's Dark", "The Edge Of Perfection", "Caught In A Mosh", "Lone Justice", "Everybody's Got A Plan", "Antisocial", "Clobberin' Time", "Indians" and "NYC 93".
"Cursum Perficio" arrives September 18 through Megaforce in the U.S. and Nuclear Blast in Europe — the band's twelfth album and their first in ten years, since "For All Kings" reached the Billboard 200's top ten in 2016. The Latin title translates roughly as "my journey is complete". Recording began in earnest in 2022 at Dave Grohl's Studio 606 in Los Angeles, with Jay Ruston co-producing alongside the band.
The physical release is a collector's maze: standard CD, a Target CD with a fabric patch of the cover, standard black double LP with a pop-up gatefold, and zoetrope pressings in red for Target and purple for Amazon, plus lilac, white, a signed red ripple edition and a red/orange/yellow indie variant.
ANTHRAX were formed in Queens on July 18, 1981 by guitarist Scott Ian and then-bassist Dan Lilker, and were the first of the East Coast thrash bands to be counted alongside METALLICA, SLAYER and MEGADETH.