Scott Ian Shares Update On Anthrax’s Progress With Their New Album

During an appearance on Trunk Nation last week Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian shared an update on where the East Coast thrash legends are at with their long-awaited new album. As their fans are painfully aware, the group have been taking their time in crafting their follow-up to 2016’s “For All Kings“.

Speaking with host Eddie Trunk, Ian stated of the band’s progress:

“We had a session here in L.A., Charlie [Benante, drums], Frankie [Bello, bass/vocals] and I tracked nine songs. I finished the guitars on those right before we went to New York—sometime in June, something like that. Frankie is currently in L.A. tracking bass on those songs…

I’m going to the studio Friday, since I’ve had time, like a month to live with my guitar tracks, I’ve heard lots of things that I think are very cool to add, so I’m going in Friday to spend a day doing some overdubs. [Guitarist, Jon] Donais‘s already working on solos back East at his home studio and I am working on lyrics. So I think we’re well into it, let’s put it that way.

There’s gonna be another recording session, October, maybe November—Charlie‘s got these two windows to get in because we have another four or five that we wanna track. And we’re hoping that if things just say on the very loose schedule we have I’d like to think that by Christmas/New Year’s we’ll have most of this wrapped up. Maybe not mixed, but certainly all recorded by then.”

“My goal is to have three songs ready for [Joey Belladonna] to sing on by next month. And then from there, Joey, it doesn’t take him very long. Once he kinda wraps his head around it and kinda runs it through his filter, he’s a fast worker. So once he starts it doesn’t take long.

I think it’s more the onus on me of being happy with the lyrics I’m writing. I actually had three or four songs written months ago, and then I revisited them like a month ago and I threw ’em all in the garbage. I was just like ‘this is crap.’ But I’m in a much better place with that now.”

Initial sessions for this new effort found the band once again working with producer Jay Ruston (Stone Sour, Avatar).