ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian is featured in a new interview with Ed Masley at The Arizona Republic. An excerpt is available below:

Q: How does it feel to still be doing Anthrax after 30 years?

Ian: "It's awesome. Certainly, back in 1991, I could safely say I never in a million years thought that in 2011 I would still be doing this, let alone playing Yankee Stadium on Sept. 14. I can tell you those thoughts never crossed my mind."

Q: When the thrash scene was starting, it seemed like such a departure for metal at the time. What inspired you to take the sound in that direction?

Ian: "There was no thrash direction at the time when we were doing what we were doing. Thrash didn't exist yet. We were just listening to lots of music, you know, that somehow we were channeling into what was to become our sound. I would say mainly at the time, IRON MAIDEN and JUDAS PRIEST and MOTÖRHEAD were huge influences on us and then a lot of the more obscure New Wave of British Heavy Metal stuff, like RAVEN and VENOM, which at the time wasn't obscure but now a lot of people probably don't know about it, certainly not in the mainstream. Even ANVIL. We were huge fans of Anvil. We're just massive, massive music fans, all of us, and somehow it just turned into what we started doing."

Q: You mentioned the show at Yankee Stadium. You were one of the Big Four of thrash with METALLICA, MEGADETH and SLAYER. When Metallica crossed over like they did, was there any thought in the Anthrax camp like "We could do that; we could be the next ones to have that big crossover like they did"?

Ian: "I never thought that way. Metallica just made a record that connected with humanity. Right place, right time, right album. I don't see it as them doing anything different. They were just being Metallica. That's like saying when GUNS N' ROSES put out Appetite for Destruction, they crossed over. No. People just connected with the record. It could have been any Metallica record. As far as I'm concerned, it could have been Master Of Puppets. It could have been Justice. It was just kind of the right place at the right time, I think. And no, we never thought like we could do the same thing, because you can't, you know? If you tried to do something, you would just fail miserably. You either write songs that just come organically or you shouldn't be in a band."

Click here for the complete interview.

Anthrax will release Worship Music, on September 13th in North America via Megaforce Records and September 14th in Europe via Nuclear Blast Records.

Worship Music will be available as a regular CD, CD digi, vinyl and MP3 download. Nuclear Blast Germany is also offering the album as a mail-order edition with 7" (featuring the REFUSED cover song 'New Noise') and two different double-LPs: splatter and orange vinyl.

Worship Music will be released in Japan on September 14th via Victor Records. This edition will include a remix of the album track 'Crawl' as a bonus track.

Check out audio samples from the entire album at this location. Check out a brand new BraveWords.com review of Worship Music here.

US fans can pre-order Worship Music from Bestbuy.com here and gain entry into a free exclusive Anthrax show; then go to Freesecretshow.com and enter your Best Buy 12 digit order number to get your free ticket. The show will be at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square NYC on Monday September, 12th at 8 PM. Bring your ticket, bestbuy.com receipt, and photo ID the night of September 12th to get into the show.