It's Official: JOEY BELLADONNA
Rejoins ANTHRAX For Tour, Studio Album - May 10,
2010
With rumors swirling since ANTHRAX drummer
Charlie Benante and bassist Frank
Bello were seen together with former
ANTHRAX vocalist Joey Belladonna
late last month in New York, the band — Benante,
Bello, and guitarists Scott Ian
and Rob Caggiano — is elated to announce that
Belladonna has officially rejoined the band. In
his once and current capacity, Belladonna will
make his first appearance with ANTHRAX this summer
when the band joins METALLICA,
SLAYER, and MEGADETH — the "Big
Four" founding bands of the thrash genre — to co-headline a series
of Sonisphere Festivals in ten European cities, as
well as playing a handful of ANTHRAX-headlined
shows (itinerary is below).
"I am super-excited about this," said Scott Ian.
"Joey and the rest of the band came to see me play
at a club in New York, I hadn't seen Joey for
years, since the end of the reunion tour. Joey
taps me on the shoulder, instant big hug, it felt like no time had
gone by. The band dynamic is an interesting one — in
ANTHRAX, Joey and I spent so many
years of our lives together, we grew up together, we know each
other so well, so it was like no time was lost."
Belladonna, an essential part of
ANTHRAX's lineup from 1985 to 1992, sang on some
of the band's most popular albums including "Spreading the
Disease", "Among the Living" and
"Persistence of Time". He had reunited with
original members of ANTHRAX for the 2005-2007
"Among the Living Tour", but this situation is
different. Explained Belladonna, "I had been in
touch with Charlie and Frank,
then I got a call from their manager who said that everyone wanted
me back in the band. I thought, 'are you guys for real? You want me
up there, fronting the band like it was before?' I was thrilled.
We've already started to reconnect with the old ways of having
conversations. Everything is easy going and feels really
good."
"We're going to do these summer shows and gel as a band," explained
Charlie Benante, "get comfortable playing with
each other again, and the energy from that should go right into
making new music."
Immediately following the final Sonisphere
festival in early August, the band will fly back to the U.S. and
begin writing and rehearsing for a new album that's expected to be
out in early 2011.
"We've got an unusual luxury of hindsight," added
Ian. "We finished an album a year ago, we've lived
with those 12 songs since then, and we can look back on them and
see what we really love and what we can make even better,
especially with Joey back in the fold."
Added Benante, "There are five or six songs from a
year ago that we don't want to change, we love them the way they
are, other than having Joey making them his own
with his vocals. Then there's another five or six that we may want
to rework, and then there are a bunch of other tunes that are still
in the early stages, that we want to finish.
"The band has been on an emotional roller coaster since last
summer," Benante continued, "but I think
everything that we've had to deal with during that time was pushing
us toward this, to Joey being back in
ANTHRAX, and the timing couldn't be more perfect
or appropriate. To have Joey with us playing these
shows with METALLICA, SLAYER and
MEGADETH is the way it should be — as
ANTHRAX's vocalist from '85 to '92, he was part of
the 'Big Four.'"
"John was a real stand-up guy about the
situation," said Ian, about John
Bush, ANTHRAX's vocalist from 1992 to
2005 and for some of ANTHRAX's most recent live
shows. "He knew we wanted to move forward at full speed, that we
needed a total commitment to ANTHRAX, and he knew
that wasn't what he wanted. We certainly wish John well. We've had
so many great times with him, and we appreciate his stepping in
last summer at the last minute, and performing with us since then.
He will always be an integral part of the ANTHRAX
family."
With worldwide sales in excess of 10-million,
ANTHRAX is about to celebrate its 29th year as a
band. Over its career, ANTHRAX has received
multiple gold and platinum albums, multiple Grammy
nominations, and a host of other accolades from the press, industry
and fans.
ANTHRAX has scheduled the following dates:
Jun. 16 - Warsaw, Poland @ Sonisphere
Jun. 18 - Wil, Switzerland @ Sonisphere
Jun. 19 - Mimon, Czech Republic @ Sonisphere
Jun. 20 - Vienna, Austria @ Arena Wien
Jun. 22 - Sofia, Bulgaria @ Sonisphere
Jun. 24 - Athens, Greece @ Sonisphere
Jun. 26 - Bucharest, Romania @ Sonisphere
Jun. 27 - Istanbul, Turkey @ Sonisphere
Jul. 31 - Knebworth, UK @ Sonisphere
Aug. 01 - Lokerse, Belgium @ Lokerse FeeSten Festival
Aug. 03 - Hengelo, Netherlands @ Metropool
Aug. 05 - Moscow, Russia @ B1
Aug. 07 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Sonisphere