Anthrax
Attack Of The Killer B's

THE REVIEW

This album is fun. This album puts you in a good mood. This album is a joke. This album is the last with Joe Belladonna.

Year 1991. As the liner notes well state, this album was not a new album with new songs but rather a collection of b-sides, live performances, and rare and hard-to-find tracks released to satisfy fans' demands for some hard-to-find tracks. So, here's the idea of compiling them into one album, which, given its 44-minute duration, I wouldn't call an E.P., as also stated in the liner notes.

The band came from the unconvincing "Persistence of Time" released a year earlier. Now, I don't know if when this collection was released, their relationship with the record label at the time was on the rocks, so the release of this album was to fulfill contracts, as was the case with the live album "The Island Years" released in 1993. Nevertheless, Attack... brings Anthrax back to that "goofy" dimension of Thrash Metal, those who don't take themselves too seriously and play with their image while still being the most serious in lyrics. It can't be denied that in front of Mustaine who was perpetually angry with a sulk, Slayer with their fanatical lyrics, and the four horsemen freshly popular on MTV thanks to the Black Album, Anthrax emerges victorious in terms of simplicity, self-irony, willingness to experiment, and humor.

Well, this album is here to prove all that. The opening Milk (Ode to Billy), where Billy stands for Billy Milano (the singer of S.O.D. and M.O.D., as likable as he is unlikable) is a cover of SOD, a band, a precursor of Crossover ThashCore, born as a side project to Anthrax, featuring the hefty Billy alongside Benante, Ian Scott, and Dan Lilker. Hardcore track with a syncopated ending just like the other SOD cover here Chromatic Death.

If you want to have in your discography one of the first examples of Crossover Metal-Rap, you need to have this album (only here will you find it). It’s the now-legendary Bring The Noise, a PUBLIC ENEMY song orchestrated by Anthrax with violent Thrash outbursts. A small masterpiece that, almost twenty years later, still hits the mark. Similarly, I'm the Man '91 was remade from scratch.

THE rest is a handful of live tracks (Keep it in the Family and Belly of the Beast), a hilarious country song, Startin' up a Posse, a ballad, N.F.B. (Dallabinikufesin), demonstrating how with an acoustic guitar and a few romantic words mixed together, you can make big money (ask some hair metal bands of the time). Other covers like Pipeline by The Chantays, Parasite by Kiss and Sects by the French Trust, as underrated as they are plundered for covers.

In short, a medley without a logical sense, but it has the great merit of entertaining from start to finish, perfect for a nice outdoor pool party, women... okay, a barbecue and some cold beer will also suffice, our friends Anthrax would appreciate it just the same.

Two years later, the New Yorkers will return seriously with the great Bush on vocals and that great (highly underrated) album " Sounds of White Noise", one of the masterpieces of the '90s.