Anthrax with Joey Belladonna brings memories of all the good old times the thrash band created in the midst of mixture of New York between metal and hardcore, and for most of us, those are happy times. After Anthrax’ reunion with this epic singer at the beginning of this decade, it was to expect that Anthrax would get back to track to release music more often, and now they bring their 11th full-length album ‘For All Kings’ to us, introducing their first single ‘Blood Eagle Wings’ with a rather bloody video which you can watch below.
From the speed and hardcore influenced band from the early eighties the energy remains in this new album, expressed in the lyric teasing video ‘Evil Twin’. But in the first official video from the album ‘For All Kings’ Anthrax decided to take a different direction where they made an epic eight minutes long song where they take a rather gloomy approach. The video itself is a showdown to that darker sound together with the current trend of soft gore imagery that goes well with the lyrics of the song. ‘Blood Eagle Wings’ musically speaking shows the evolution taken by Anthrax in their own sound, and lyrically gives the perfect combination of social criticism to many of today’s realities.
[blockquote cite=”Scott Ian”]Any great city, whether it’s London, Rome, Paris, New York, Los Angeles — these cities are alive because of how many people were killed to make these cities what they are, how much blood was spilled over time.[/blockquote]
The video was directed by Jack Bennett and stars James Duval as the main character. In ‘Blood Eagle Wings’, the main character succumbs to the violence generated by the corruption of power, which goes hand in hand with the riffs played by Scott Ian and the roaring voice of a more mature Joey Belladonna.
[blockquote cite=”Jack Bennett”]We created this torture chamber, sitting below this horrible king’s hall… This guy gets to play with his toys and look through the grate in the floor and see this group of people that he’s essentially crushing. The idea is that this power is built on top of these people. It’s brutal and there’s a lot of amazing torture gags happening, but it all serves this concept that progress is brutal. Civilizations progress in a way that is violent.[/blockquote]
Release
- You Gotta Believe
- Monster at the End
- For All Kings
- Breathing Lightning
- Suzerain
- Evil Twin
- Blood Eagle Wings
- Defend/Avenge
- All of Them Thieves
- This Battle Chose Us!
- Zero Tolerance
‘For All Kings’ marks the mature relationship between the rest of Anthrax with Joey Belladonna, during the recording process Joey was given more freedom to develop the vocals for the album. Such freedom is reflected not only in ‘Blood Eagle Wings’ but also in the two other singles released before the album where we can hear a more versatile singer surfing through ten tracks, going from old school Anthrax into a more modern take on the band. ‘For All Kings’ was released on February 26th through Nuclear Blast Records In Europe and Megaforce Records in the United States and it’s the follow-up album of ‘Worship Music’ which was released in 2011.
