ANTHRAX: Japanese Tour With HELLYEAH Rescheduled For December

ANTHRAX's previously announced Japanese tour with HELLYEAH, which was slated to kick off on May 5 in Tokyo, has been rescheduled for December. The new dates are as follows:

Dec. 12 - Big Cat - Osaka, Japan
Dec. 13 - O-East - Tokyo, Japan
Dec. 14 - O-East - Tokyo, Japan
Dec. 16 - Diamond Hall-Nagoya - Naka-ku, Japan

SEPULTURA guitarist Andreas Kisser will play 11 shows with ANTHRAX in July as a temporary replacement for Scott Ian, whose wife, Pearl Aday, is expecting the couple's first baby.

ANTHRAX drummer Charlie Benante spoke to SoundSpike late last month about the status of the recording sessions for the band's long-awaited new studio album, "Worship Music", tentatively due in September via Megaforce Records in the U.S. and Nuclear Blast Records in Europe.

"This is years in the making," Benante said of the forthcoming CD. "It's finally at the end stages of it all. I'm very happy. This record is like a labor of love in all the different ways that it took to get here a lot of blood, a lot of sweat, a lot of tears. It's very emotional to get to this point. Nothing's fabricated here. It's all based on truth."

He continued, "The ANTHRAX car was driving through peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. Sometimes we just couldn't get out of the valleys. Finally, we went in for a tune-up, and now it's running really well. We're trying to stay up in the peaks. There were so many things that went into this record that made it special. There were so many other things going into it that were not special. We needed to make this record as special as possible. Certain personalities interfered. This record is probably the most emotional record that we've ever had to make."

"Worship Music" will mark the first new ANTHRAX recording to feature singer Joey Belladonna in 20 years.

"I don't want to talk to you and give you all these clichs," Benante said. "I don't want to do that. I want to be as real as possible. Joey sounds awesome and that's the truth. When he sang on the first song, it sounded like ANTHRAX again. I finally knew this is the way it should sound."

Benante added that the album will feature a tribute to JUDAS PRIEST, tentatively titled "Judas Priest".

"Let's say that JUDAS PRIEST was one of the first true heavy metal bands that a lot of the Big Four bands looked up to and almost modeled themselves and their music [after]," he said. "You can hear how JUDAS PRIEST influenced a lot of those bands."