Anthrax: “I don’t know why we were put together. Maybe it was for a greater purpose, that we would be the ones to go and do something?”

More than four decades into their career, Anthrax have just added another chapter to a catalogue that stretches back to the early 1980s. From their emergence from New York’s metal scene through landmark records including Spreading the Disease, Among the Living and Persistence of Time, the band have built a career that has included thrash metal, collaborations outside the genre and periods of significant change within both the band and the wider music industry.

Their latest album, Cursum Perficio, arrives a decade after 2016’s For All Kings, following a writing process that extended across the pandemic and a period when drummer Charlie Benante questioned whether he wanted to make another Anthrax record. Continuing to write ultimately brought him back to the band creatively, with material accumulated before and during lockdown eventually taking shape when Anthrax were able to reconvene and play together. The resulting record draws on different periods of the band’s history while reflecting where Anthrax find themselves more than forty years into their career.

The album also finds Benante reflecting on time, longevity and the journey that has taken Anthrax from their beginnings in New York to their current position. Alongside the new material, his recent years have included joining Pantera alongside Philip Anselmo, Rex Brown and Zakk Wylde, while his work with Anthrax continues to be driven by songwriting, creativity and the relationship the band have built with generations of fans.

In our latest Cover Story, we sit down with Charlie Benante to discuss Anthrax’s new album, rediscovering his desire to write, the changing music industry, the band’s New York roots and what keeps him creating more than four decades into his career.

Did the journey you’ve been on change the original plan for the record or what it was going to sound like? Given the length of time involved, did the material change from what you originally envisaged?

“After the For All Kings record, I didn’t want to do another record. I went through a period of a couple of years where I was thinking, ‘why do I want to put myself through that again? Nobody buys this stuff anymore.’ There were all these different emotions and, to be honest with you, I was off the path. We were just doing shows based off that record. Before the pandemic, I started to get interested again because I’m always writing. One of the songs, ‘T.O.M.B.,’ which stands for ‘Target on My Back,’ is from around 2015. I dusted it off and found another part to go with the other parts.

Then the pandemic hit and I went through a period of enjoying being home, being in my house and making music again in my studio. I would make these demos, send them to the guys or put them in the Dropbox, and I’d get a thumbs-up: ‘Great, can’t wait to get together when this is finally done.’ I accumulated so many songs that, when the time came to get together, we went to L.A. and started playing them. It felt really good to be together again in a room making music. That’s when I thought, ‘Okay, I think this is going to be something.’ That’s how it went.”

Prior to lockdown, it sounds like you were almost done with it all, but when you eventually got back together, you were in a much better place. Do you think the relationship within the band changed during that time?

“If the pandemic did anything to a lot of us, it rewired us in a way. I still think the old shit comes out. The same problems you had before still come out. For me, though, this time I didn’t give a fuck about what used to happen within the band. I was just like, ‘Fuck this. I’m going to keep doing this, keep making songs and writing songs.’ I wanted to have another twenty songs to deal with. I only made it to fifteen, and I know I could have kept going, but at some point there needed to be a deadline. I think the space helped to rewire some of us.”

”After the For All Kings record, I didn’t want to do another record. I went through a period of a couple of years where I was thinking, why do I want to put myself through that again? Nobody buys this stuff anymore.”

Going onto the record, the title Cursum Perficio came from a Marilyn Monroe documentary you watched. What stuck out about that phrase? I understand it means something along the lines of “my journey has come to an end.”

“There are so many different aspects as to why that title stuck with me. One is that this has been such an amazing journey, to kind of coin The Who. For me, at least, it’s taken me from nothing to something. Like I said earlier, I didn’t know if I wanted to go through another whole writing process with this band again because it definitely gives you ulcers, stress and a lot of stuff I just didn’t want to endure again.

For me, I was ready to say, ‘This is the best that I could do, and I think this should be it.’ That was my way of thinking. Then, when I saw that title, it just hit me. That’s why it became the title of the album. The other thing is that The Beatles ended with twelve records, and I was cool with this being our twelfth record too. But if you ask me this next week, I’ll probably say, ‘No, no, no. We’ll probably have another record or so.’ We’re definitely closer to the end than we are to the beginning.”

You’ve said the title doesn’t mean this is Anthrax’s final record, but you’ve also said, ‘I believe we completed the task.’ What is that task?

“Surviving. Surviving the making of this record and surviving the pandemic that threw us all for a fucking loop. It’s been a pretty nasty few years. Unfortunately for us Americans, I feel like the pandemic hasn’t ended because we’re dealing with something even bigger now. We’re at a time where, man, I don’t even look at the news. I don’t want to watch it because every week there’s just more chaos. I’ve come to the point where I’m somewhere in this country, like millions of others, where we don’t hate a person, but we don’t really feel that other people should be doing what they’re doing for this person.

He’s not worth it. I don’t understand the thinking of, ‘Your team won,’ because you’re still losing. Trust me. My problem is that they don’t know how to govern. They know how to grift. They know how to make a lot of money for themselves, but they’re not doing anything for us. That’s my point. I don’t want people giving me shit for what I’m saying because I’m not hating on you. I’m just hating on what’s happening.”

V13 Cover Story // Issue 137 // Anthrax

I’ve spoken to a lot of bands over the last few years about how difficult things have become. For a band like Anthrax, how much harder has life become in terms of touring, record sales and the wider music industry?

“Of course it has, and it makes it harder to enjoy it as much as you should be enjoying it. People don’t understand. They think, ‘Shut up and play your fucking drums.’ It’s like, man, fuck you. It’s so unfair because, if anything came from music and speaking out against things, that’s how change happened. I look at my favourite punk rock bands and all they did was lash out at the situation and the establishment. Unfortunately, we as musicians have to join that establishment because that’s the way it works. You dream of signing to a record label and getting a record contract.

It’s the greatest thing, and then you become part of that machine. When the whole thing went down with Napster years ago, nobody came to save us. Everybody basically said, ‘Well, you’re on your own.’ Then we ended up with the life we have now, with streaming, where we’re basically making records for other people to make money. We don’t make money like we used to from selling a hard copy of something. The artist should still make that. Your IP is very important, but the record labels sold us out. That’s the truth.”

What keeps you motivated and keeps you driving forward?

“The love of the music and the love of other music. It’s something I can’t hide. I have to do it. I have to shout it out. If I didn’t make records anymore with Anthrax, I would make records with other people. I would still do it because I still feel like I have so much in me. That’s why I do it. I do it for the love.”

You recorded the album at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 again. After the journey you’d been on to reach this point, how important was having that familiarity around you?

“If you look at it from the point of view of whether the studio is worth recording in, the answer is yes. Aesthetically, sonically, everything about it is what you dream about a studio sounding like. That was the easy part. The other part was Dave dropping in and giving his moral support, his friendship and his vibe. Dave and I have the same type of likes. We love the same type of music. He often says to me, ‘You get my band.’ He was one of the first people I sent some mixes from the record to. I said, ‘Here’s what we did at 606,’ and he wrote me this long thing back. It made me so happy because he got it. Being there created more energy on top of the energy we already had, if that makes sense.”

As a writer, I often doubt what I’m doing. You reread something and wonder whether it’s good enough, but then you get that one email where somebody has taken the time to read it and tell you it inspired them. When you’re having a shitty day and questioning whether you want to carry on, that can make a huge difference.

“Exactly. It gives you confidence for the next time you go into it. It’s like, ‘I just won this race. I’m so happy right now. I’m motivated.’ You have the confidence for the next one. Scott will always say, ‘This is fucking great. This is great.’”

Scott has compared the progression from Worship Music and For All Kings into this record with the journey from Fistful of Metal and Spreading the Disease into Among the Living. Do you hear that connection ?

“Yeah. I feel like I went back to my early ’90s period with some of the songs on this record, especially a song like ‘Edge of Perfection.’ To me, it had some of that 90s feel and a little bit of that early 2000s black metal, just a sprinkle of it. I welcomed all of it. It was like, ‘Oh, that’s great right there. That could be really good and epic.’ So I just went with it.”

Listening to the record, there’s material that immediately takes me back to when I first discovered Anthrax. When you play songs that take you back to that energy, do you still get the same feeling you had when you were originally writing them?

“It depends on the moment, where I am and the day. Scott and I were just discussing this show we’re going to play in Brooklyn. We’re going to open up this club that closed down called St. Vitus. We’re basically doing a video shoot for one of the new songs, but we’re also going to play some songs. I said, ‘Man, let’s throw out some older songs. Let’s not do the ones we usually do. Let’s bring back a song like ‘Lone Justice.’ Let’s bring back ‘Belly of the Beast.’ Let’s do stuff like that and play a couple of new songs.’

I know people will be pissed off, but they’re going to be pissed off if we play those songs again anyway. We usually ask people online what song they want and take a poll, and it’s usually the same songs all the time. I’ll go and see bands and they’ll throw out a couple of deeper cuts, and you can see the crowd reaction isn’t as great as it is for those other songs. I played in London with Pantera and Metallica on July 5th, and I watched Metallica play some obscure songs. The crowd was into it, but then suddenly they played ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and the fucking place erupted. What are you supposed to do? You have to play these songs.”

Anthrax ‘Cursum Perficio’ album artwork

Is it different in different parts of the world? South America, for example, seems to have audiences that go fucking nuts for early Metallica, Anthrax, Testament or whatever you give them.

“Yeah, 100 per cent. There are territories that are just so fucking passionate. I don’t know if it’s because of the lack of bands going there in the past and now they’re going there more frequently, so the excitement is, ‘Yes, we’re getting this here!’ They know how to fucking throw a party over there. That’s the truth. There’s a reason we wanted to shoot one of our live videos in Chile because we’d never seen anything like that in our lives. I’ll never forget the first time we played there and there were these red flares going off in the crowd. I was like, ‘Should I stop? Is something wrong? Did a car break down in the audience?’ But no, that’s just the way they celebrate and have a good time. You become used to that.”

When you’re writing new material, you’ve obviously got classics like “Caught in a Mosh,” “Indians” and “I Am the Law” behind you. How difficult is it not to rewrite those songs or follow that blueprint? Do you consciously try to stay away from that?

“It never happens like that because I’m pretty aware of it. I nitpick the shit out of it. It’s like, ‘Does this sound like something? Is this like something else?’ Then I’ll run it through the filter: ‘Do you know this?’ ‘No, I don’t know it.’ It’s like, ‘Okay, good. That’s a great song then.’”

What makes you sit there and think, “That’s a great Anthrax song” in 2026?

“I just feel it. If something moves me, then that’s it. I’ve been wrong too, where some demo I had didn’t really hit as well as I wanted it to. I save it, dust it off the next time and maybe then it’s ready. That’s what happened with ‘Target on My Back.’ I dusted it off, figured out a part to go after the cool part I already had, and then it became a song.”

There’s a song on the album called “NYC ’93.” Could you talk us through what inspired that title?

“That was a time in the band when John Bush had just come in. There was a new chapter starting, and he was part of that chapter. For some reason, New York was the backdrop for it. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of excitement and a lot of, ‘Wow, I think we’re touching on something really good here,’ because the songs were just coming. I would come in with a song like ‘Only,’ which was unlike anything I’d written before. I was almost testing the water with that song, and then it came to life. The next one was ‘Room for One More,” then ‘1,000 Points of Hate.’ All these songs started coming out. It was such a great time, and that was New York, 1993.”

“I feel like I went back to my early 90s period with some of the songs on this record, especially a song like “Edge of Perfection.” To me, it had some of that 90s feel…”

What do you miss about that time compared with New York now?

“I don’t live there anymore, so I can’t really say, but New York is still my home. I’ll be back there next week.”

Does it still feel like home when you go back?

“I try to make it feel like that, if that makes sense. I still want to recapture my home, but sometimes I do feel like it isn’t home anymore. We’re playing two shows there with Maiden and then we’re playing the one show in Brooklyn, so, knock on wood, it’s great.”

Going back to those kids who started Anthrax in 1981, what do you think they would make of the fact that you’re still making albums like this 45 years later?

“I don’t know what they would think. Scott is, at times, the workaholic, and at times I’m the workaholic when it comes to certain things. I love the more creative side of the band as opposed to the live-playing side. I don’t get that excited about it anymore. Certain shows I do, but other times I don’t have that youthful excitement I once did. Plus, I’m always worrying because I hurt my hand on the last run, so I had to take some time away. I worry about things like that too, about pushing myself too hard.”

Time has been a recurring theme across some Anthrax records. Is that something you’re increasingly conscious of after being together for so long?

“Constantly. That’s where Persistence of Time came from. We started making records in 1983 and then suddenly it was 1990. It was like, ‘man, you can’t stop this.’ Time is ticking all the time, and that was the whole thing surrounding that record. Here we are again with almost the same theme, but told in a different way. It’s still upon us. There’s this one line in ‘’ where it says, ‘Where did it all go?’ Sometimes I think about that. Where did it all go? It just happened so quickly, and that’s a part of life.”

I first saw you in 1989, but Anthrax were always one of those bands that pushed boundaries. Were you aware that you were seen as a band pushing those boundaries, and what did it feel like being part of that?

“I felt like we almost got penalised for doing that. I think people didn’t understand or respect what we were trying to do. The short answer is that we loved doing it. It made us so happy, but I think other people were ready to tear us down for doing it too. Then those were probably the same people who, two years later, were signing Rage Against the Machine and Korn.”

What do you think has been the one characteristic that has kept Anthrax going through everything and surviving to the point where you’re still making records like this?

“The thing that keeps me doing it is that relationship with our audience. That’s what keeps me going because it’s us and them, and that’s it. Nothing else really matters. It’s just us and them, and they take us for what we are. I’m so appreciative that they’ve stuck with us, and we have so many new fans now. Another generation is picking up on it, which is great. I see these playthroughs from drummers playing the new songs, and it makes me so happy because I know it’s hitting them. I was talking about the musicians we love who are starting to fade away and pass on. Dolly Parton passed away two days ago.

Tim Curry passed away. Tim Curry, for me, was huge. I’ve seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show hundreds of times. I would go at midnight with everybody. I got to meet Tim Curry a couple of years ago. He was in a wheelchair, but it was still him. It was still Tim Curry. When I saw he passed away, dude, I was so fucking sad. The only song I thought about was ‘I’m Going Home’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That was always a sad song to me, but now it has more significance. The things that inspired us when we were younger still inspire us today. I’m so excited for this Beatles deluxe edition because I’m such a fucking Beatlephile. I heard a working tape yesterday of Paul and John working on ‘Day Tripper,’ and I was like, ‘how did this song go from this to that in such a short period of time?’ Those guys just worked. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody works on songs. It’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s good. Let’s go.’”

What keeps you doing that? What keeps you fighting for it?

“I think it’s that fight in me, that work ethic. I enjoy it. I still want to do this. I don’t want to stop because it’s what I do. A painter’s going to paint, a bowler’s going to bowl. That’s just the way I feel. I have to do something every day. I listen to music every day. I play guitar. It’s a thing. It’s like eating. I have to do it.”

You’ve mentioned Pantera and talked about some of the frustration you felt prior to COVID. How much did the Pantera opportunity help your creativity?

“The Pantera thing came into my life and brought me so much joy and happiness. I was always friends with Philip and Rex, and now I’ve become great friends with Zakk. The four of us together, I don’t know, man, we just have this bond. Playing those songs for people, I do it with the utmost respect because that’s the way I have to do it. I did my homework. Fuck, I want people to close their eyes and say, ‘Wow, these fucking drums sound just like Pantera.’ That was a personal goal.

Vinnie was awesome. Drummer aside, he was just a bro and a friend. There were two things I always respected about him: his approach to the songs and where he would put things, and his ear, because he was responsible for a lot of that sound. He found a way to fit his drums, Dime’s guitar, Rex’s bass and Philip’s vocals onto this canvas, and you don’t miss any of them. Every one of those things is right there in your face. I was always amazed at how he managed to carve out the frequencies and make them fit. It’s brilliant. Not only was his drumming great, but his ear and his approach to the music were even greater.”

You talk about how Anthrax has given you a life, love and family, and that it’s something you never take for granted. After everything you’ve been through, what does Anthrax mean to Charlie Benante in 2026?

“It’s given me a life. It’s given me this synergy that we have. Before Anthrax, I didn’t know these other people. I know how we were put together, but I don’t know why we were put together. Maybe it was for a greater purpose, that we would be the ones to go and do something. Especially being New Yorkers, because there was never a really big metal scene in New York. I think we were the only ones at the time. There was hard rock and there were other things.

The bands we looked up to in New York were, of course, KISS, Blondie, the Ramones and a lot of the hardcore bands like Agnostic Front. We always looked up to them, but we never felt like we had a scene like they did in San Francisco. They had a fucking metal scene. For us, we were on this island of Manhattan, kind of alone. Then bands started to pick up and it became something, but for the most part we always felt kind of alone and singled out.”

“Before Anthrax, I didn’t know these other people. I know how we were put together, but I don’t know why we were put together. Maybe it was for a greater purpose, that we would be the ones to go and do something.”

Does that shape your work ethic when you’re a young band? Is that something you carry with you four decades later?

“It totally is, especially that New York perseverance. It’s that vibe where you hit us and we come back. We could have stopped making records after Stomp 442. We went through a very tough time after that when metal was a bad word, but we just rode it out until everything came around again. We knew it would, and sure enough, it did. You’ve just got to wait it out. That’s my thing to young people: find your sound, find your thing, and if it isn’t happening right now, keep going. It will.

I think this album says that this band has so much more to say, more so than ever. For me, this group of songs pushes us and pushes the boundaries of whether it’s metal, rock or thrash. Everything that went into this record was made from the ingredients we used back in the ’80s. We’ve just maybe done it with a bit more maturity.

I want to hear the audience singing some of these songs. I want to fulfil my excitement. I want to play some of these songs, get a taste of it and just enjoy it.”