ANTHRAX Guitarist Scott Ian - Joey Belladonna "Was Really Into The Idea Of Coming Back"
May 13, 2010, 14 years ago
ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian has talked to Classic Rock about the circumstances that led to the recently announced return to the band of vocalist Joey Belladonna.
Says Ian: “We had a meeting with John (Bush, the ARMORED SAINT frontman who has been singing with Anthrax), at which he was honest enough to tell us that he really couldn’t make the commitment to the band that he knew we needed. It was all very friendly, but ended with us feeling we had to find someone else.
“Nobody wanted to go down the route of finding an unknown. So, it left one option: calling Joey. He was really into the idea of coming back.
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Belladonna will make his first appearance with Anthrax this summer when the band joins METALLICA, SLAYER, and MEGADETH - The Big Four founding bands of the thrash genre - to co-headline a series of Sonisphere Festivals in ten European cities, as well as playing a handful of Anthrax-headlined shows (itinerary is below).
"We're going to do these summer shows and gel as a band," explains drummer Charlie Benante, "get comfortable playing with each other again, and the energy from that should go right into making new music."Immediately following the final Sonisphere festival in early August, the band will fly back to the US and begin writing and rehearsing for a new album that's expected to be out in early 2011.
Complete dates for Anthrax - with Joey Belladonna on vocals - are as follows:
June
16 - Sonisphere Festival, Warsaw, Poland18 - Sonisphere Festival, Wil, Switzerland
19 - Sonisphere Festival, Prague, Czech Republic
20 - Arena Wien, Vienna, Austria
22 - Sonisphere Festival, Sofia, Bulgaria
24 - Sonisphere Festival, Athens, Greece
26 - Sonisphere Festival, Bucharest, Romania
27 - Sonisphere Festival, Istanbul, Turkey
July
31 Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, UK
August
1 - Lokerse Feesten Festival, Lokerse, Belgium3 - Metropol, Hengelo, Netherlands
5 - B1, Moscow, Russia
7 - Sonisphere Festival, Stockholm, Sweden
8 - Sonisphere Festival, Pori, Finland
