Review of Anthrax – “For All Kings”
Thrash Metal titans Anthrax have had more career downpoints than album downpoints. In fact, atleast in my opinion, their worst album is still fairly solid (If you’re wondering, it’s “Sound of White Noise”).
Like most of their contemporaries, they typically have taken a lot of time between albums since the turn of the millenium, which in itself has positives and negatives. You can appreciate the anticipation for an album when it takes more than 3 years, or in this case, 4 1/2.
After guitarist Rob Caggiano left the band and joined Volbeat, they recruited the awesome Jonathan Donais from Shadows Fall, who are still somewhat active but mostly on lengthy hiatus (EXTREMELY unfortunate). So, where does this album fall in the Anthrax musical timeline?
While it’s still a thrashy album, it’s actually a fairly diverse sounding effort and probably could’ve been the follow up to either 1990’s “Persistence of Time” OR 2003’s “We’ve come For You All”… or, I guess you could say it’s a mixture of those sounds. There’s tight crunchy riffs but there’s also a healthy dose of melody and harmonizing guitars. Joey’s voice was meant for the songs on this album more than “Worship Music” for the obvious reason that these were written for him to sing on. His voice has also gotten better with time.
It’s as worthy of an album in your Anthrax collection as anything else they’ve done, period. They still prove to be as relevant in Metal as anyone and only continue to add to their legacy.
Album highlights: “You’ve Gotta Believe”, “Monster at the End”, “For All Kings”, “Breathing Lightning”, “Zero Tolerance”
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