Generally when a band sets out to re-do their old hits it sounds pretty awful. Even the bands I respect, like Deep Purple and Iron Maiden, released truly wooden renditions of their old hits. Then you have terrible business decisions, like Ozzy Osbourne's senseless re-recording of the rhythm section of his first two solo albums. For some reason, Anthrax is able to buck the trend and release an entire album of rejuvenated hits...and it works!
My history with Anthrax is downright spotty. In fact, adding this to my old post from last month, this is all I've got. I dabbled a bit in high school, but never really made an effort to comprehensively collect their albums. For one thing at the time they were moving into the John Bush era, which for some reason I felt was a bad move. Now that I'm listening to this (featuring all pre-Sound of White Noise songs) I'm thinking "Joey who?" and "Dan who?" Perhaps I was a bit too unkind, but in the era of the "new" Metallica, all of the old 1980's metal bands were suspect. In fact, if a friend hadn't given me a copy of this album, I would have had no idea they sounded this good.
It would appear that after a prolonged identity crisis, the band finally figured out what works, even if they couldn't hold together the "classic" lineup throughout. Since the release of 2003's We've Come For You All, they seem to be back where they should have been all along. What makes it even more impressive is that unlike other bands that need a stable lineup to sound stable, Anthrax can flip guitarists and vocalists around and still sound great.
I'm throwing Among the Living in my shopping basket right now. Just like Metallica's Death Magnetic, you've won me back after all these years.
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