Anthrax

Queens, July 1981

Anthrax were formed on 18 July 1981 in Queens, New York, by rhythm guitarist Scott Ian and bassist Dan Lilker. Ian is the only founder still in the band. Drummer Charlie Benante arrived in 1983 and bassist Frank Bello in 1984, and both have stayed ever since, which makes the rhythm section one of the longest continuous partnerships in American metal.

The singer's chair was the unstable one. Neil Turbin held it from 1982 to 1984, Joey Belladonna took over in 1984 and sang on the records that made the band's name, John Bush replaced him from 1992 to 2005, and Belladonna returned in 2010. Lead guitarist Jonathan Donais joined in 2013. The present five-piece has now held together longer than any earlier version of the group.

The commercial arc is a mid-table one by the standards of the thrash bands Anthrax are usually grouped with: roughly 2.5 million records sold in the United States between 1991 and 2004, and around ten million worldwide.

The records that stuck

Among the Living (1987) is the album the band are still measured against, and it went gold, as did State of Euphoria (1988) and Persistence of Time (1990). Those three years also produced the collaboration that took Anthrax outside metal entirely — the 1991 recording of Bring the Noise with Public Enemy, which put a rap group and a thrash band on the same track and the same stage.

The Bush era produced the band's highest American chart placing: Sound of White Noise reached number seven on the Billboard 200 in 1993 and went gold. After Belladonna's return, Worship Music (2011) reached number twelve and For All Kings (2016) reached number nine.

Grammy recognition has been persistent and unrewarded. Anthrax were nominated in the metal performance categories in 1991 and 1992, again for I'm Alive from Worship Music at the 2013 ceremony, and for their cover of Neon Knights at the 2015 ceremony. They have not won. The Big Four framing — Anthrax alongside Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer — only became a literal thing in 2010, when the four shared a stage for the first time.

What ten years actually looked like

The gap between For All Kings in 2016 and the new album is the longest of the band's career, overtaking the eight years between We've Come for You All (2003) and Worship Music (2011). Ian has put the delay on the pandemic: the plan was to break for Christmas and New Year at the end of 2019, reconvene in 2020 and make a record, and then, in his words, the world had other plans.

By his own account the work itself was not slow. Speaking to TalkShopLive on 10 September 2026, Ian said the band started on the album properly at the beginning of 2022 and that he had the finished copy in his hands in November 2025. Wikipedia's recording dates run from 2023 to 2026, at Dave Grohl's Studio 606. Jay Ruston produced, as he did on the two previous albums.

Bello, talking to Rolling Stone Australia in November 2025, called it a step up in musicianship and songwriting and promised something thrashier than anything the band had done. The album was announced publicly on 19 March 2026, with Benante correcting the assumption that a May release was coming — May was the single, September was the record.

The title came from a Marilyn Monroe documentary. Cursum Perficio is Latin for something close to "my journey has come to an end", and Benante has said there was a feeling circulating among the four bands of that generation that this could be the last record. The band have since been clear that it is not. It is, incidentally, their first album since 2004 made with no change to the line-up that made the one before.

Cursum Perficio, out 18 September 2026

The album arrived on 18 September 2026, on Megaforce in the United States and Nuclear Blast in Europe: eleven tracks, 53 minutes, written across Belladonna, Bello, Benante and Ian. Three singles preceded it — It's for the Kids on 15 May, The Edge of Perfection on 10 July, and Everybody's Got a Plan on 6 August, the last with a video built from tour footage.

Reviews have been warm. Writing in Louder on 17 September, Alex Burrows called it a furious, playful, slammingly serious return to form, said the variety was hugely impressive and the delivery entirely on point, and ended by hoping the record marks the beginning of a late-career renaissance rather than the end of a journey. He singled out The Long Goodbye, an opener written about Ian's father, alongside NYC 93 and Watch It Go for outright speed, and the title track and The Edge of Perfection for scale.

The dissent is about sequencing rather than quality: Angry Metal Guy rated the first half highly and described the album overall as front-loaded. Other reviewers picked out Target On My Back and My Victory. Ian, before release, described The Edge of Perfection as the best song the band have ever written, which is the sort of claim that tends to survive about a fortnight, though the track has so far come out of the reviews well.

A year spent on someone else's stage

The touring cycle started in March 2026 with four Australian dates — Brisbane's Fortitude Music Hall on the 23rd, Hindley St Music Hall in Adelaide on the 25th, Festival Hall in Melbourne on the 26th and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on the 28th — their first Australian shows since 2019. Japan followed, then a European summer split between festival slots and club headlines: Le Bikini in Ramonville-Saint-Agne on 30 June, Cenon the following night, Resurrection Fest at Viveiro on 2 July, Rock Imperium in Cartagena on 4 July, and a stadium support in Lisbon on 7 July.

Since late August the band have been the opening act on Iron Maiden's Run for Your Lives tour in North America, with Megadeth in between. That leg started in Toronto on 29 August and has taken in Montreal on 3 September, two nights at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey on 5 and 6 September, Louder Than Life in Louisville on 17 September, BMO Stadium in Los Angeles on 25 and 27 September, the Alamodome in San Antonio on 29 September and Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City on 2 October. A headline club date at the Roxy in West Hollywood sits between the two Los Angeles stadium nights.

Ian has been candid about what that schedule does to a setlist. This is the band's twelfth record, he told TalkShopLive on 10 September, and with that much material a set that makes everyone happy is never going to happen.