Thrash titans Anthrax and Testament, who haven't toured together in more than a decade, are set to co-headline a U.S. tour beginning Friday, October 14 in Grand Rapids, MI (itinerary below). Anthrax will close all shows, and Death Angel will be main support for the entire tour. The coast-to-coast trek will figure to decimate more than two dozen cities over a five-week period, with both Anthrax and Death Angel debuting brand new material from their new albums, both set for summer/fall release; Testament's new album is set to be released in 2012.
"We've been tight with the guys in Testament for a long, long time," said Anthrax's Charlie Benante. "so we're really looking forward to hanging out with them on the road. And all of us in Anthrax are big Death Angel fans, so this is going to be a monster of a good time - for all of us and for the fans. Plus, with the incredible success of The Big Four shows over the last year, we wanted to tour with some of the 'second wave' of thrash bands."
The tour will follow Anthrax's Big Four "hometown" appearance at Yankee Stadium on September 14, with Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth.
"We're excited to do this tour because Anthrax was actually the first band we ever toured with," adds Testament vocalist Chuck Billy. "It's an accomplishment 20 odd years later that we're going to do it again. The tour kick-off date is actually about five days difference from the kick off date of the first tour 20 years ago. The first time we performed with Anthrax, we only had a total of ten songs, so obviously now we have many songs to pick from so it will be very different. It's good to see that a lot of the faces in the bands are the same as back when we first did this original tour 20 years ago."
Dates are subject to change and more will be announced - the itinerary for the Anthrax/Testament/Death Angel Fall 2011 tour is as follows:
14 Orbit Room, Grand Rapids, MI
15 Congress Theatre, Chicago, IL
16 First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
18 The Cotillion, Wichita, KS
19 Summit Music Hall, Denver, CO
22 Nokia LA Live, Los Angeles, CA
23 Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, CA
24 House of Blues, San Diego, CA
26 Sunshine Theatre, Albuquerque, NM
28 South Side Music Hall, Dallas, TX
29 Emo's East, Austin, TX
30 Warehouse Live, Houston, TX
1 House of Blues, Orlando, FL
2 Revolution, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
4 House of Blues, Myrtle Beach, SC
5 Fillmore Charlotte, Charlotte, NC
6 The Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD
8 Northern Lights, Clifton Park, NY
10 Electric Factory, Philadelphia, PA
11 Palladium, Worcester, MA
15 Town Ballroom, Buffalo, NY
17 Stage AE, Pittsburgh, PA
19 Rave, Milwaukee, WI
ABOUT ANTHRAX:
Anthrax is touring in support of Worship Music, the band's first new studio album in eight years, and the first with Belladona since 1990's Persistence of Time. The album took a challenging four years to make, and, according to Scott Ian, "This record is filled with not just four years of our lives, but with our lifetime in the band. It encompasses it all, and when I listen to the record, I can hear all the energy and love and hate and pain and laughter that went into this." Fittingly, Worship Music is set for a September 13 release date.
On this tour, Anthrax will build their live set with songs from throughout their three decades together, including some of the brand new tracks. "We've been playing 'Fight 'em 'til You Can't' since the first Big Four show last summer," explained Benante, "and it's been great to see how quickly the fans took to it. We're all really excited to play some of the other new songs on these dates - we're just all looking forward to getting out on the road here in the U.S."
The early press reports for Worship Music have been, quite frankly, absolutely stellar, and point to this being the album that Anthrax fans have waited so long for. Alexander Milas, Editor-in-Chief of the UK's Metal Hammer, and VH1/That Metal Show's host Eddie Trunk, have both ranked it as "the metal album of the year," while a number of journalists have singled it out as Anthrax's best career album.
The 11-track Worship Music was produced by Anthrax, Rob Caggiano and Jay Ruston and recorded over a four-year period at studios in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Belladonna's 2010 return to the band prompted some of the songs originally recorded to be re-crafted with fresh lyrics or tweaked to better suit his overall vibe and energy. Some of the songs were completely replaced with brand-new ones and, of course, all have Belladonna's inimitable vocal stamp on them.
With worldwide sales in excess of 10-million, 2011 sees Anthrax celebrating its 30th year as a band. Over those three decades, Anthrax has received multiple Gold and Platinum albums, multiple Grammy nominations, and a host of other accolades from the media, industry and fans.
ABOUT TESTAMENT:
Bay Area thrash originators
Testament have recently been spending time in the studio recording
Dark Roots Of Earth, the follow up to their 2008 Golden God 'Album of the Year' award winning album,
The Formation of Damnation, released on Nuclear Blast Records to critical acclaim. The album was named SiriusXM Liquid Metal's 'Album of the Year' in 2008, and debuted at #59 on the Billboard Top 200.
The Formation of Damnation is
Testament's highest charting release in their 24-year history.
"We're more than halfway done recording the new album, Dark Roots of Earth," affirms guitarist Alex Skolnick. "It's coming along as well or better than any album this band has done. It just seems to have a focus, clarity and definition on a level that I don't remember at this point in the process. Of course, you can never truly sum up an album until all the tracks are recorded, the mixes are done and the entire collection is mastered. But from where things stand right now, it's looking like we may have a winner."
The band has spent the last three years touring the world in support of The Formation of Damnation, and now brings its original, classic lineup back home to the United States with Anthrax and Death Angel. Testament also performed recently with contemporary thrash giants Megadeth and Slayer on the highly-demanded American Carnage Tour. The band is now set to finalize 2011 with stellar performances on this tour with Anthrax and Death Angel.
ABOUT DEATH ANGEL:
Bay Area thrash legends
DEATH ANGEL will be touring in support of their latest release
Relentless Retribution, which recently landed at position No. 10 on the Top New Artist Albums (Heatseekers) chart, making it their highest charting record since the band's reformation in 2004.
Relentless Retribution was recorded at Audio Hammer Studios in Sanford, Florida with production genius Jason Suecof (
TRIVIUM,
AUGUST BURNS RED,
THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER,
ALL THAT REMAINS,
WHITE CHAPEL,
DEVILDRIVER). The savage cover art was handled this time by Brent Elliot White (
JOB FOR A COWBOY,
CARNIFEX,
WHITECHAPEL).
Not every band can live up to a legacy but every once in a while a group exceeds expectations by pushing boundaries in a genre they've helped create, but DEATH ANGEL is one such band. In 1986, a DEATH ANGEL demo produced by Kirk Hammett (Metallica) titled "Kill As One" sparked the interest of Enigma Records. The band was soon signed and the band's debut, The Ultra Violence, was released in 1987. The album was a full-frontal assault on the ears, buzzing with the group's youthful energy, and The Ultra Violence sold 40,000 copies in just four months. Another innovative recording, Frolic Through the Park, followed, marking DEATH ANGEL's evolution both lyrically and musically. "Bored," another track from the band's second release, highlighted the cutting-edge band's inventive dynamics, and won a spot on MTV's "Headbanger's Ball."
Geffen Records was impressed enough with DEATH ANGEL's television premier to offer the band a deal, and DEATH ANGEL became the first band of their breed to appear on the major label's roster. At Geffen, the band released what is widely regarded as one of the most original and accomplished thrash metal albums ever recorded, Act III. The record pushed the limits of the genre to create something truly unique, a definitive work that is essential to any metal fan's music collection. Death Angel's masterful songwriting ability was once again on display nationwide in 1990, as the videos for "Seemingly Endless Time' and 'Room With a View' saw heavy rotation on MTV.
DEATH ANGEL's trajectory to fame was tragically cut short in 1990, when the band's tour bus crashed in the Arizona desert. Original drummer Andy Galeon was critically injured, and would need more than a year to recover. During this downtime, vocalist Mark Osegueda left the band and moved to New York to pursue a life outside of music. The remaining members went on to form The Organization, and released two full-length albums under that name.
The Organization disbanded in 1995 and the members split up into various projects. DEATH ANGEL wouldn't resurface again until 2001 to perform at a cancer benefit for frontman Chuck Billy (Testament) called "Thrash of the Titans." The response was so great that many offers came quickly in 2002, beginning with a "secret" gig in San Francisco, and sold it out under the psuedo name, "Kill As One."
The next year saw DEATH ANGEL supporting Metallica at the Fillmore in San Francisco as well as supporting Anthrax and Halford in the US. What began as a gathering of positive vibes for a friend turned into a full time mission to continue a journey that began so long ago. In 2004 DEATH ANGEL released their long awaited fourth studio disc, The Art of Dying on Nuclear Blast. Since then the band has released two more records and has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, with those releases and their live show, that thrash is alive and well and that DEATH ANGEL is here to stay!
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 6:17PM 
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