ANTHRAX bassist Frank Bello spoke to Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band’s follow-up to 2016’s “For All Kings” album. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We’ve been going back and forth with stuff. Scott [Ian, guitar] and I flew out to Charlie‘s [Benante, drums] house in Chicago. He’s got a nice little studio there, so we do it there, and just do a bunch of demos. Yeah, just getting back to it, and living with the songs, making sure it’s the right stuff. And we’re gonna continue that and make sure it’s the right record. And it will be the right record, ’cause we won’t let it out without it.”
Asked how he and his bandmates know it’s the “right record,” Frank said: “After all this time, all these years of doing this, you learn not to… Nobody’s in a rush here. We get to make the record that we wanna go on tour with for two and a half to three years. In reality, that’s what happens. We have to live with it. Because we’re fans. And I think you just know when a song’s ready. So we’ll write it, we’ll digest it for a little while, then maybe go back in, nitpick it a little bit, and you make sure it’s exactly ready to go and you could feel great when you play it live. And being a fan of this music, you hope that everybody feels like that. So we just know it at this point. I think it’s smart to do it that way — to digest it and just live with it for a while and make sure they’re right. And that’s what we’ve been doing for a while now.”
Bello also talked about how difficult it is sometimes for him and bandmates to be completely on the same page when it comes to songwriting ideas. He said: “It has to make sense. We’ve learned, including myself, it has to make sense. And you just bring the argument up and say, ‘Look, this is why this happens. This is why this is too long. This is why this is too short.’ And they say, ‘Okay, yeah. It makes sense.’ We know each other pretty well like that now. You say, ‘Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay.’ And if something doesn’t, sometimes you’ve just gotta [go], ‘Okay, I’ll go with it.’ You’ve gotta believe. If somebody really feels strongly about something like that, you’ve gotta have respect enough to say, ‘Okay, I’ll go with it.’ And sometimes that works out.”
Formed by Ian and bassist Dan Lilker in Queens, New York on July 18, 1981, ANTHRAX was one of the first thrash metal bands to emerge from the East Coast and quickly became regarded as a leader in the genre alongside METALLICA, SLAYER and MEGADETH.
Active over the past five decades, ANTHRAX has released 11 studio albums, been awarded multiple gold and platinum certifications, received six Grammy nominations, toured the world since 1984 playing thousands of shows, including headlining Madison Square Garden and playing Yankee Stadium with the “Big Four”.
The arrival of “For All Kings” followed a five-year period during which the group experienced a rebirth of sorts, beginning with ANTHRAX‘s inclusion on the “Big Four” tour, and continuing with the 2011 release of comeback LP “Worship Music”.
Bello is currently promoting his memoir, “Fathers, Brothers, And Sons: Surviving Anguish, Abandonment, And Anthrax”, which was released on November 2 via Rare Bird. The foreword was written by KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons.
