ANTHRAX: “There was a coup … no-one came to rescue us” (2026)

By STEVE MASCORD

“I’M STILL very much old school. If I love a band, I’m going to go get that CD, that vinyl, whatever it is.”

So says Anthrax’s 63-year-old drummer Charlie Benante, whose ‘old school’ credentials are reinforced by his preference for phone interviews over Zooms and Teams and all that palaver. The thrash giants are in Oz as you read this, of course, with a new album having been pushed back to later in the year and a song due in May. Maybe you’ve heard a snippet or more of it at one of the shows.

It’s my second time talking to Charlie and he’s a passionate, straight-talking guy with a strong Bronx accent. This story could gently wend its way through Pantera, Ozzy Osbourne, Ace Frehley, Back To The Beginning and this thrash celebrity’s views on Billy Corgan’s recently-espoused theory that rock was the victim of a corporate assassination, not changing public tastes.

But crafted narrative seems inappropriate for such a blunt and direct man. So let’s just get out the knife and fork and attack the meat.

Anthrax recently signed with a new management company – not coincidentally the same as Pantera’s – IAG. The announcement was made in the hours before I spoke to Charlie. The album has been delayed ’til September and, he admits “… because we recently changed the team, management and stuff like that. We wanted the new people coming in, the new team coming in, (to) really know what’s going on, just kinda have more of a strategic plan.”

I ask whether it’s the Pantera link (Charlie is drummer in the reconstituted metal monsters) and he offers a laconic: “Yeah, maybe it’s a little bit of a link – all in a good way.”

NEW SINGLE AND ALBUM: “It’s a great song, that’s all I can say. We wanted the first song to come out, to basically represent Anthrax in 2025/2006. So it’s basically a thrasher number, you know?

“There’s elements of the (album) that are very abrasive. There’s elements of the record that … wow, we haven’t gone in this area. And a lot of it, it’’s a more grownup kind of sound. I don’t mean that in a way where it sounds like a Little River Band or anything but it’s just we’re more mature now and I think the writing shows it. It’s so good. And I’m not going to say ‘it sounds like this’, ‘it sounds like that’. It’s just a collection of songs where each one stands up right next to the other one.

“There will be three songs that come out before the record comes out. So you will get samples of what this record is before it comes out … I really think the Megadeth thing, having a number one record, I think was a great thing. Especially for rock music in general. It shows that it’s still viable.”

BACK TO THE BEGINNING: “The thing I remember most about it is going to Birmingham and doing that show for Ozzy and Sabbath and just feeling so much love there. Backstage, everybody was in such great moods. I mean, I’m talking everybody, from Ron Wood to Billy Corgan to all the musicians there. They were just so happy to be together. It was like I’ve known these people for years and I’ve never met them. Steven Tyler for instance. He was one of my all-time favourites. Aerosmith are one of my all-time favourite bands. I looked up to them when I was a kid. Just talking to Steven Tyler about a song like ‘No More, No More’ or whatever. It was just magical. Steven Tyler went out there and fucking destroyed it. It was killer!

“There wasn’t much chaos at all. It pretty much ran like a well-oiled machine. Everybody was prepared and everybody did what they could and that’s what I’m saying. There was no stress, there was none of that. It was all about love and just we were there for a reason. You know, Black Sabbath and Ozzy, they meant so much to people and sometimes I don’t think people realise how much that they influenced them, you know? Because I think people forget about the impact that Black Sabbath’s music had on not just heavy metal but other forms of music. Ozzy was fucking huge here (in the US) on his own, you know?

“The older we all get, the more our heroes are leaving us and the Ace Frehley one was one nobody saw coming. For me, inside, it was so tragic because he’s a part of my childhood, you know what I mean?

“KISS, to me, are one of the reasons why I do what I do. I still look up to them. I was talking to … the last interview I did, he asked about the wedding, my wedding, and Gene Simmons officiating it. And I was like, ‘you don’t know how much that meant to me’. I was so nervous earlier that day and then when Gene arrived and he came into the room where I was just waiting and he sat with me and we were talking and we started talking about old KISS. And he completely relaxed me. It was just a special moment, just having him there, you know?”

PANTERA: “I feel I was put in this Pantera situation for a reason and that’s why I embraced it so much and that’s why I love it so much because it’s something bigger than the band and I wish people nowadays would be more caring and loving towards us all, you know? Not just musicians but to each other. Stop being so rotten about things because I’ll tell you this much, 10 years time, a lot of this stuff is gone. So if you don’t enjoy it now, that’s it: it’s done.

“I think in the beginning of the whole thing there were naysayers and all I would say is ‘just come’. If you like it, great. If you don’t like it, OK. You never have to come again. But the thing is, the people who were coming were bringing their kids who never saw Pantera before. This isn’t the same. Dime (Darrell) and Vinnie (Abbott) are not there but we are just playing these songs that need to be played again and it’s giving people smiles on their faces again and it’s a great thing.”

On the question of where next for Pantera, Benante says: “I don’t really know. I know we have a few shows this summer and then maybe some shows next year but that’s as far as it goes.”

Asked about the current line-up – where he is joined by Phil Anselmo, Rex Brown and Zakk Wylde – recording new material, Benante answers: “I mean there was some talk – but nothing really. I would love to release a live album of this lineup so we can document what we did and just have it. I think that would be a great thing.”

Somehow, the claim by Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan that rock was “deliberately dialled down” in the mid-nineties comes up. The deregulation of laws surrounding radio station ownership was one factor Corgan cited.

Benante comments: “… that’s something Ive been saying for the longest time. He just said it in a more eloquent way but these fucking gatekeepers who still prevent our type of music from the masses (accessing it) … they just kind of chain us and they don’t give us the chances that we deserve that they give other music.

“Country music, man? I mean, I’m not in it, I don’t dig it, I appreciate what they do. But that music is so … it’s saturated. You know, the whole pop … they open the gates for this type of stuff. I mean rock music still has a voice, there’s a movement, you know? People need to recognise it again, what it is.

“There was a coup.

“I think who did it … I want to say Clear Channel, all of a sudden they started buying up radio stations and replacing … I’ll give you a perfect example. In LA, there was this radio station called KNAC. That station was one of the greatest stations because it gave rock fans a place to go, a dial. Turn your dial, here’s KNAC.

“When they removed KNAC, that market over there dropped so much. It changed and then it spread around the country. MTV too, remember? MTV one day said ‘we’re done playing this type of stuff’. It hurt the music business. Look what happened. Nobody came to rescue us.”

As for motivation, between us we can’t figure it out. Why was rock murdered? Because it was not controllable or predictable?

I can almost hear Charlie Benante shrug on the other end of the telephone.

“Then they should all stop using the term ‘rock star’. Fuck you, you know?”

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