IOP : You made a rather big announcement recently with Dan Nelson being named as the new lead singer for Anthrax.  How has the reaction been to that announcement?  Are things going well? CB: Yeah, you know what?  To be honest with you, and it sounds funny for me to say this but, I didn’t want to make a big announcement about it, because we are still in the early stages.  We were almost kind of forced into making the announcement now because of the internet; it ruins every surprise.  One asshole finds out about something and they post it somewhere. You know? IOP: Nothing is sacred or secret anymore. CB: Right.  So, that’s basically what happened.

IOP: Have you guys started recording, and if so, will it be a 2008 release? CB: An ’08 release looks right, but we are still in the early stages right now.  Dan has kind of jumped into this, so we just want to take it slow.  I know that we haven’t had a record out in years but, right now, I just want to not rush into things and take my time.

IOP: There were a lot of mixed reactions and comments regarding his potentially joining Anthrax and whether or not you guys had in fact asked him to do so.  What exactly happened with that? CB: The truth of the matter is that deep down in my gut I knew it was never gonna come to fruition.  Corey has been a friend for a long time and we both respect each other musically and personally; he’s great.  I think it all started as a joke, and then it kind of got serious.  We were 100% into it until the powers that be found out about it and put a stop to it.

IOP: Anthrax has had amazing career longevity, playing for more than twenty five years now.  At any point have you all ever discussed throwing in the towel or do changes such as this give you a swift kick in the ass and help to reignite that flame?

CB: I had this conversation yesterday with somebody, which it’s pretty funny that it’s coming up again.  When I was born, I came out a musician.  I didn’t learn to play or anything like that.  It was in me and there is no stopping that.  My mother always said that from an early age that you could just tell that it was just in me.  That’s all I’ve ever wanted.  Between art and music, that’s pretty much my thing.  That’s my area, that’s what I know the best, that’s what I want to do.  Music is a part of my DNA; I will never stop doing music.  It was never a question for me to stop doing it...maybe it was a question to stop in this type of music, this band.

The hardest part for me with this type of music is leaving it, because I have so many other different types of projects that I want to see come to fruition.  But, if I sit down with an electric guitar, this style of music comes out of me.  If I sit down with an acoustic guitar, it’s a totally different world.  So to answer, it never dawned on me to stop.  It dawned on others to stop.  Others who have come from this band decided not to do this anymore; their priorities changed.  I mean, my priorities changed too, since I have a little girl now.  It definitely changed for me, but the music that’s inside of me?  That just never stops.

IOP: Speaking of kids, who inspired you growing up? CB: Definitely The Beatles.  That was it for me when I was very little.  When I was my daughter’s age, two years old, my mother said I was playing along to Beatles records – not playing perfectly, but because I had four older sisters who were always playing them in the house, I was just a little sponge and absorbing it all.  The Beatles are definitely the ones that, nine times out of ten, people will give that answer; that it was The Beatles that changed it for them.  They were the first ones really and then Led Zeppelin comes in.

KISS, of course, Black Sabbath, The Sex Pistols – all this stuff I just love, and it all became a part of what the Anthrax sound was.  When I first joined the band, Anthrax sounded like an Iron Maiden/Judas Priest type of band.  After I got into the band, the sound changed a lot.  It became more Punk Rock, more speedy…that’s the stuff that I love. IOP: Thrash? CB: It became Thrash Metal, basically.  I can’t believe how many people still remember the phrase, the term, Thrash Metal.  To me, that is so 1986.

IOP: [laughs] I have found that most metal heads are die hard and anything they can get their hands on - sounds, terms – it’s going to stick with them.

CB: It is very loyal.  

IOP: What about now?  Are there any bands or musicians that you look at and see potential longevity in? CB: Oh boy.  It comes now at a time when, to me at least, music is at its worst.  It started to get bad towards the end of the 90’s and it’s just continuously going downhill.   There’s always a few that I can pick out from the tree, but others just rot and fall.   I really like this band, Every Time I Die, a lot.  Their last album is awesome.  It’s just fucking great riffs, great lyrics and great execution.  I just love the way that record is.  They remind me of this Swedish band called Refused that I used to love.

IOP: Very good band. CB: Indeed.  It reminds me of that band.  I’m not saying they copied them at all, it just has something that reminds me of Refused.  I love that last record.  I think they’re on the right track and I hope they continue to grow and be great.  For me, I still get excited when I see a Led Zeppelin reissue or anything like that.  We talked before about staying loyal…I’m a loyal, die hard fan of theirs.  If I love that band, I love that band. I can’t think of anything else that I really, really like. IOP: I get that answer a lot, unfortunately.   CB: Because every band sounds alike.

IOP: I was trying to come up with a ‘Top 10’ list for 2007, and I could not come up with more than three, and I still haven’t.  And one of them is an EP. CB: You would need to get me to do a ‘Top 5’; I couldn’t even do a ‘Top 10’.  It would need to be five and two of the things that I picked in there were demos that I produced. To me, you like less and less but, there’s more and more of it.  It’s almost like McDonalds.  You don’t really like eating McDonalds. Yet, they’re all over the place so someone is eating the stuff.

IOP: You guys were featured on an episode of Married…with Children and there’s something in that episode that I have to ask you about; The Mystery Pack.  What exactly was it?

CB: The Mystery Pack was this kind of green gelatin type of thing with some fruit chunk things inside and they put some other stuff on top of it.  It just had a very sweet taste.  It didn’t really have a bad taste, but it was supposed to be very…hallucinogenic.   IOP: It looked pretty gnarly.   CB: Yeeeeeah. [laughs] That’s a great episode.  It was a lot of fun doing that.  It was probably one of the highlights from the whole career of being in the band.  That was awesome.

IOP: You were also a part of the Jaws Documentary: The Shark Is Still Working.  How did you end up being a part of that? CB: I had some friends that knew the guys who produced it, and I also had a friend who was involved in it.  He’s a special effects artist and does some great work. He is a fan of the band and he knew of my love for Jaws.  He told those guys “you gotta put him in the documentary because you don’t have anybody from the music world in there.  You’ve come up with everyone else but you have no one from music… and he’s a Jaws lover.”  And, that’s how it came about.    We talked on the phone numerous times, then they sent me the list of questions that they wanted me to answer, got a camera crew here and then we just did it.

IOP: Seems like that would be a lot of fun.

CB: I can talk about Jaws all day.

IOP: That’s understandable though.  How Robg. (iconsoffright.com) and I became friends was through a mutual love of horror and music.  I think if you sat any of us in a room together, we could be there talking for hours about all things horror and music.

CB: I find myself, whenever I get around other horror admirers or lovers, sometimes there’s a clash. And sometimes there’s an easy going love for the exact same movie.  I’m not a lover of the Jason movies.   IOP: Any specific reason or they just don’t do it for you? CB: They don’t do it for me.  To me, Halloween was the all time best slasher type of movie.  Jason was just kind of a rip off of Halloween.  I know there’s tons of Jason fans out that that will probably read this and go “what a fucking idiot!” but it just didn’t do it for me.  I liked the first Nightmare on Elm Street, but I really didn’t like the ones that followed it.

IOP: Most sequels are never quite as good as the first.  They can be good, but they’re just not the same. CB: Exactly.  There’s a few that have done that. Like the first three Star Wars, Indiana Jones did it; Jaws did not do it.  It’s hard to top that first one. You set the bar and now where do you go?  So then you have to rely on Friday the 13th 3-D, Jaws 3 – D and that’s just a gimmick.  They have nothing else to do so let’s “Hey!  Here’s a novelty… let’s put fucking glasses on people.”

IOP: What bugs me about Star Wars is that they had how many years in between shooting the films and, in my opinion, they didn’t even come close to the originals.  They were highly disappointing.   CB: Yeah, I didn’t care for them.  Those last three movies for me were just movies to be made to sell toys. Whereas the first three movies that he did were all from his heart.  They were a labor of love. You know?  I know he had the story for the prequels and everything, but to me it was a big letdown.  That’s as far as it goes for me with those movies.  I own them… don’t ask me why I own them. I guess because I’m a completist and I have to have it, but they just sit and collect dust.

IOP: [laughs] Same story.  There is definitely a need for completion in this household when it comes to DVD’s.  It doesn’t matter if we actually watch them.

CB: Well, here’s the thing, and my wife says this to me all of the time, “you have it sitting on a shelf over there, but yet it’s on TV and you watch it.”

IOP: Yeah, but we all do that.  It’s the convenience of not having to change the channel.  

CB: [laughs] Yeah, exactly.  I just got Bram Stokers Dracula on Blue Ray and I’m dying to watch it, but I have no time.  Sorry, I kind of went off on a tangent there.

IOP: No, it’s completely cool.  I do have a couple of questions that are from a few fans, if you don’t mind? CB: No, go for it. IOP: If there was a film that you could have provided either the soundtrack or score for, which would it be? (Question from Erica, Ronkonkoma, NY) CB: I like the first Matrix movie.  That has real potential to have real good riffing behind it.

IOP: Where do you think that Anthrax fits in today’s metal landscape?  Does your ‘new’ sound tend to stay towards that old school thrash, or do you guys feel that you need to show that you are more relevant, so to speak, with the amount of new bands that are now out there in the metal world?  (Question from Frank, Sayville, NY)  

CB:  This is the thing about the way it happens.  Nothing is ever really forced; it’s all pretty much organic.  The way a riff come out or a song comes out, it just comes out.  It may unintentionally be inspired by something…by a movie, by something that happened to me earlier on or a song that I heard, but it’s never sit down and “OK, it’s 2:00 and I’ve gotta write this riff and it’s gotta be a throwback to the 80’s.”  It’s really never like that.  There’s a song that’s called ‘Fight ‘Em Till You Cant Fight No More.’  That is the most thrashiest song right now.  It’s kind of like 1986 thrashy kind of thing.

IOP: I know that it’s still early on in the game, but have you guys started planning a tour or anything, yet?

CB: No, but that’s the way the cycle goes, you know?  You put a record out, you go promote it and play some social network where you’re live instead of on your IPOD. (laughs)

IOP: Is there any band that you would like to see tour with Anthrax?   CB: I have friends in so many different bands…like last summer we did this tour with Rob Zombie and that was really good, man.  We just had a good time, everybody was really friendly, we all got along and it was great.  There are numerous bands that I’m friendly with, but I don’t know if it would necessarily work with our type of music.   Like, I’m friends with Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater, but I don’t know if their audience would accept us.  I’d love to do that, you know? IOP: Actually, I think people would like that.  I know I would.  It doesn’t seem like it would work in theory, but I think that a show like that would be accepted rather well.   CB: I just think that people need to be more open minded about music in general.  There’s metal and than it branches off into a hundred other different types of…stuff, and it’s just a label that gets put on.  But yeah, at the end of the day, it’s music.  You use a guitar, I use a guitar.  You use drums, I use drums, too…hey, look at that.

IOP: Speaking of, I have been noticing lately that a lot of drummers, even more so in the ‘newer’ generation, seem to being getting hurt and injured a lot.  Given how long and how hard you have been playing, do you have any advice that you can offer to aspiring drummers? CB:  I deal with certain issues, physically…problems when I play now.  Carpal Tunnel is one and I know other drummers have it, too.  You’re basically an athlete and you’re using your body so hard when you play.  The adrenaline is pumping and you don’t really realize that damage that you do to your body during that show.  Some nights I’ll come off a show and it will just be like “Damn.  I did something…I went for something there” and I can totally feel that I tore something in my shoulder.  Icing afterwards is important.  It’s not all very glamorous.

IOP: You guys all go through a lot to put on a show, and I give you a lot of credit, especially after playing for over twenty five years.  Actually, you have been playing longer than that, since you were what, four or five years old? CB: Yeah, you don’t really think about it too much, but then you see other drummers playing and you’re just like “Damn.  Charlie Watts is still playing.”  It’s fucking inspiring.

IOP: A song that never fails at getting me amped is ‘Bring Da Noise’.  Can you tell me a little bit of the history behind your collaboration with Public Enemy on ‘Bring Da Noise’?  How did that come to be?

CB: Well, you have to go back to when we did ‘I’m The Man’.  It was really supposed to be something that was done with the Beastie Boys, but then scheduling problems came about and we just couldn’t get it together.  There was always this thing that everyone knew that we as Anthrax loved Rap.  We used to know practically everybody at Def Jam and it just became a very friendly vibe.  They used to come to a lot of the shows, and when we were on tour in Europe, Scott was wearing a Public Enemy shirt on stage.  Chuck D saw that and he named Anthrax the song ‘Bring Da Noise’.  That to us was such a big, big compliment.  A few years later we did a cover of ‘Bring Da Noise’ and that’s exactly how it happened.  It was such an easy thing to do.

We did the video and on the way back I was talking with Chuck up in the front lounge of the bus.  It became “Hey, we had such a great time doing the video, why don’t we try and do a tour together?”  That is exactly how it happened.  We put it together, then went out and did a tour.  I look back at it now, and it was pre-lollapalooza and all that, and we didn’t realize how big it was.  It didn’t bother us at the time with how much of a chance we were taking.  We were kind of splitting it down the middle. We are a heavy metal band, but we wanted to experiment and do something different.  It was a weird thing, but…would I do it all again? Yes, 100%.  We were the first bit of alternative.  Once the alternative thing hit a year or two after that, we weren’t embraced by that side.

We were still deemed “heavy metal”, but meanwhile we kind of broke down a huge barrier.  It probably set the stage for bands like Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit.   IOP: For an idea that you guys never really stopped to think about, the rewards have been astounding.    CB: It was a privilege and an honor working with Public Enemy.  That’s as simple as I can put it.  It was perfect.

IOP: I am wondering if there are any more surprises or anything that we can expect from Anthrax?  Any sneak peeks that might be available?

CB: I’m sure there’s going to be a clip from something on our website, at some point.  Yeah, there’ll probably be a surprise or two, somewhere.  For me, I like doing that, but I don’t want to hear the bullshit that happens after.  There are people out there that are such miserable pricks and everybody feels that they have to give their opinion.  Now if you have a keyboard in front of you, you can do that.

IOP: Yeah, all of these people safely placed behind their computer monitors must feel really big bashing everyone all that they can. CB: For me it’s like, what have you accomplished in your life that gives you any credit to criticize anyone in music, or in anything?  It just kind of fucking freaks me out sometimes.  People think “Well, my voice needs to be heard about this!” Who gives a fuck about you?  The people who do that should probably pay more attention to what’s going on in their city, their country and fucking start protesting.  The way they used to do it in the ‘60’s, about shit, you know?  This country, to me…I’m a proud American, but when I see bullshit about fucking sixteen year old girls getting pregnant and I read comments from stars like “I fully support her”, I’m like, Fuck You.   Don’t fully support her.  Kids look up to her because she’s on a fucking television show. And try explaining that to your sixteen year old kid.  I wish that whole thing would all come to an end.  All of them, I just wish it would end.  It’s just gossip and it’s disgusting.

IOP:  Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.  I don’t understand why people constantly focus on what’s wrong instead if trying to make things right.

CB: Yeah, exactly.  The bottom line is that everybody at some point in their life is going to have to deal with some issue of getting hurt or getting sick, or whatever the hell it is, and then fucking get ripped off for getting sick.  You get those bills coming in for having to go to the emergency room.  That just cost you 15 grand, but yet you go home and watch TMZ.

IOP: [laughs] One last thing…will you be contributing any artwork to this next album? CB: I already have the whole concept in my head.  The title I have been working on for this record is ‘Worship Music’ and it basically deals with a very dark vision that I have for the cover.  I told Scott [Ian] about the title and he was like, “Yeah dude, that’s fucking great.  We can call the tour ‘The House of Worship Tour’.”  That’s the theme we’re working on, so no one can steal that, It’s ours.  I’m going to try and get Alex Ross to do the cover again ‘cause he’s the shit.

IOP: Charlie, thank you so much.  It has been a pleasure, and an honor.

CB: Awesome.  No problem.  


Unlike many of their thrash metal brethren, Anthrax has managed to stand the test of time, consistently delivering a powerful and aggressive sound that refuses to be ignored.  Releasing iconic albums such as ‘Among the Living’ which produced the Metal anthem ‘Caught In A Mosh’, and the compilation album ‘Attack of the Killer B’s’ of which ‘Bring The Noise’ is featured; a collaboration between Anthrax and Public Enemy that has gone down in music history as one, if not the best “Rapcore” songs to exist.

I wish the best of luck to the guys of Anthrax and offer a “thank you” to Charlie for taking the time to speak with me.  It was truly an honor.