ANTHRAX — Spreading The Disease (review)

ANTHRAX — Spreading The Disease album cover Album · 1985 · Thrash Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
AtomicCrimsonRush
This is the first Anthrax album for me and one of the first thrash albums with some of the most incredible riffs I have heard. It is a raw sound the band generates and a little under produced but it doesn’t matter such is the power of the metal. The riffs are killer on A.I.R. with its anarchic lyrics belted out by Belladonna, telling us “you’re no good, misunderstood, …. So high and mighty though much too blind to see”. At the time I could relate to this myself and I soaked it all in though I still don’t know what AIR stands for (Anthrax Is Rock?)

1984-1988 were the years when metal was king and every young male teen was heavily into it. Anthrax certainly made an indelible mark with this 1985 classic. Madhouse and the drilling riff heavy Armed and dangerous were essential listening for thrash addicts but I was really taken with the moderate tempo and scratch riffing of Medusa in particular. The lyrics are unforgettable “Seize, appease, deceive, die… Medusa, she's staring at you… with her eyes…Evil witch, cast her spell, seducing you, She'll take you to the very depths of hell, cannot move, no eyes to see, a statue now, For all eternity Medusa laughs at you And you're her slave.”

Not everything on this album rocks as awesome as these tracks specifically the messy speedy Gung Ho, but it is the raucous crunching power metal of the guitars of Spitz and Ian and those pounding drums that draws you in.

A great album and one of Anthrax’s best, before they inundated us with that awful rap crap. Anthrax hit the nail on the head with this early look at the thrash craze.
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