Caught in a Mosh: BBC Live in Concert [PA]

Performer: Anthrax
Distributor: MSI Music Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Frank Bello , Joey Belladonna (vocals); Charlie Benante (drums). Liner Note Author: James McNair. If it was a reaction to California's eternal sunshine and plastic sheen that inspired Metallica and Megadeth to help create the dark, angst-filled extreme metal that became thrash, perhaps it was New York City's inherent toughness that caused Anthrax to inject a quirky worldview and sarcastic sense of humor into its own pioneering speed metal. Like NYC proto-punks the Dictators before them, Anthrax's uncompromising individuality may have cost them the kind of mainstream success later achieved by their contemporaries and followers, but it also endeared them to an unusually loyal hardcore fanbase. This loyalty extended across the Atlantic to England, as evidenced by the rapturous audience reception documented on CAUGHT IN A MOSH: BBC LIVE IN CONCERT, which features two British gigs from Anthrax's 1987 heyday. Both the Hammerstein and Donnington festival shows find the band in peak form, whipping the crowds into a frenzy with its high-energy chugga-chuggery and vocalist Joey Belladonna's Bruce Dickinson-like tenor. On classics such as the pounding, hardcore-influenced "I Am the Law" and the genre-defining political song "Indians" Anthrax plays it fast and snap-tight, stripping away metal's traditional over-the-top showiness in favor of pure, unadulterated heavy music with no excuses or flash. The effect of this then-still-relatively-new approach is positively electrifying, and a welcome reminder that Anthrax will forever stand as one of the most important bands in thrash.

Critics of heavy metal long pointed out the genre's penchant for often taking itself far too seriously, but N.Y.C. thrash metallists Anthrax showed that metal could indeed have a light-hearted side. Besides helping to put thrash metal on the map with a slew of classic albums in the 1980s, the band was one of the first to merge rap with metal via their cult hit "I'm the Man" and their historic collaboration with Public Enemy on the 1991 remix of PE's "Bring the Noise."

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