Five years since Worship Music and Anthrax are firing up another set of accessible, perfectly recorded songs easy to love due to rhythmic precision, clean vocals and thoughtful, mature lyrics. Seriously, Anthrax and Megadeth are in a similar place, the main difference being one’s got the irascible voice of Dave up top and one’s got Joe Belladonna with his trademark melodic singing, although he mostly sounds like a different guy, given his lower, more aggressive registers. Beneath him, many songs are thrashed fast by everybody... except Charlie, meaning there’s a lot of full throttle writing with half-speed drum grooves (see “Evil Twin,” “Suzerain” and “You Gotta Believe,” as well as those signature NY thrash parts where he’s whacking snare on one and three, along with breaks for toms. It is of no consequence that Rob Caggiano has been replaced by Jon Donais from Shadows Fall, because For All Kings is typical highly pro Anthrax, focused on songs, which are, to an extent, proggier, more dressed with parts and long intros, and plain longer than usual, the band creating epic panoramas (see “All of Them Thieves”) over which the band’s artfully political lyrics take on extra resonance, given the ambitious vocal melodies. 

Cool way the album closes, with one of the hard rockiest tracks, “This Battle Chose Us” giving way for the album’s thrashiest, “Zero Tolerance.” ...And Justice For All Kings? Sure, I kept thinking of that record or even Death Magnetic through some of these landscapes, but certainly not when it came to Jay Ruston’s production, which... it’s fine and all, but it’s certainly just “there,” making no statement whatsoever rather than how computers rule the world. Whatever the case, the efficient slotting of sounds ensures that the hooks all over tracks like “Monster At The End” sing loud and clear.