ANTHRAX Bassist: 'Nobody Is Building Houses On Back Of Reunion Tour'

ANTHRAX bassist Frank Bello spoke to Australia's Pyromusic.net about the group's upcoming "reunion" tour, which is scheduled to hit Australia in May.

After a 13-year break, ANTHRAX's "classic" lineup of Bello, Charlie Benante (drums),Joey Belladonna (vocals),Scott Ian (guitar) and Danny Spitz (guitar) will tour together, beginning with three warm-up shows in the U.S. at the end of April. An excerpt from the interview follows:

Pyromusic.net: What kind of a set-list can we expect for these shows? All pre-'93?

Frank Bello: "Oh, man, we have so many. It goes from 'Deathrider', to 'Got the Time', to 'Medusa', there's so many different songs in there from that era — we're gonna mix 'em up. There are so many songs we haven't played in years, I mean, literally years, and we want to make it special. We're actually going back and re-learning these songs because I think we've only played some of these songs a couple of times in our lives. So it should be great! It should be fun!"

Pyromusic.net: Rumours of a new reunion album abound, is there any weight to these rumors?

Frank Bello: "Right now, to tell you the truth, what I'm concentrating on is doing this reunion tour. And to be honest with you, all I can do is concentrate on day-to-day things. I can't really think about later on because I don't know if that's gonna happen. If it happens, great, but right now I just want to enjoy the time with these guys and playing with them because there's a genuine great vibe we have going on together."

Pyromusic.net: That sounds great because there wasn't always a positive vibe regarding Joey or Danny as performers after they left the band. How has that changed?

Frank Bello: "Well, Danny just really lost his passion there for a while and needed a change in his life and that's why he went off to Switzerland and started getting involved in watchmaking. He just left the music business for a while, which was probably good for his life. Joey did his own thing with his own band, which was smart — he jammed with a lot of people. And I think, it all needed to be like that for a while, 'coz everyone gets their space and everybody comes together later on and you've got that genuine striving hunger that we all have right now. That's why it's funny when you see the five of us in a room now, it's like, 'We're ready to go!'"

Pyromusic.net: That leads into my next question nicely: Do you have anything you'd like to say to the people who have cynically labelled this reunion as a capitalist venture only?

Frank Bello: "Well, all I can say, and I'm being completely honest here — I grew up in the Bronx with humble beginnings and nobody is building houses on the back of this tour, that's as honest as I can be. There's no Ferraris or mansions that are gonna be bought from doing this tour. This is more just a feeling that this is the right thing to be doing right now, it comes from within, and the timing is right for it."

Pyromusic.net: What keeps the ANTHRAX machine pumping after 20 years then?

Frank Bello: "It's just the great music … it's the songs, it's the show and the energy and there's a chemistry here that when the five of us get on stage it's just amazing. I look forward to feeling that again. Next Monday is our first rehearsal with the reunion line-up and I'm really pumped for that and next Friday is our first show, a warm-up show in Detroit, and I'm really looking forward to it! It's right in your face, it's right here you know, and I love the whole 'living on the edge' vibe, it's great!"

Read the entire interview at Pyromusic.net.