Sometimes, how I choose to review an album on these pages is a
\nstrange process. Maybe it’s because I hear a certain song on the
\nradio or I watch a special on VH-1, and a fire is lit under me to
\npull one of that artist’s albums out of the Pierce Memorial
\nArchive.<\/p>\n
In the case of
\nSpreading The Disease<\/i>, the 1985 major-label debut from
\nthrash metallers Anthrax, it came about because of an eBay auction
\nI won. I had bid on a lot of 10 tapes in the hopes of landing an
\nOverkill album I didn’t own (I’m
\nstill<\/i> trying to get my filthy little paws on
\nFeel The Fire<\/i>), and a copy of
\nSpreading The Disease<\/i> happened to be part of the bunch. It
\nalso assured me that I didn’t have to go sorting through the vinyl
\nto find this album.<\/p>\n
This disc was a transitional one in more ways than moving up
\nfrom an independent label for the band. Previous vocalist Neil
\nTurbin had been replaced by Joey Belladonna – a move which seemed
\nright for the band. (They also tested out the new line-up with an
\nEP,
\nArmed And Dangerous<\/i>.)<\/p>\n
But you can feel a little bit of uncertainty in the air of this
\nmusic, as the band – Belladonna, guitarists Scott “Not” Ian and Dan
\nSpitz, bassist Frank Bello and drummer Charlie Benante – tried to
\nfind what niche the band belonged to in a musical field that was
\nstarting to get crowded.<\/p>\n
The first thing that strikes me about this album, even 15 years
\nafter it first appeared, is that you can understand almost every
\nsingle word that Belladonna sings. It’s almost as if the band
\ndecided that his vocals would be mixed to the forefront stronger
\nthan many bands. What’s magical about this is that it doesn’t take
\naway any of the power from any of the other instruments.<\/p>\n
The second thing that hits you is that Anthrax isn’t singing
\nanthems to demons or witty ditties about getting laid. If anything,
\ntheir music tended to make you think. Sure, there were moments of
\nabandon, even in the more cerebral songs, but here was a band
\nsinging about Greek mythology (“Medusa”), positive thinking
\n(“S.S.C. \/ Stand Or Fall”) – and even about the Holocaust in a way
\nthat left no doubt as to its horrors (“The Enemy”). It was a bold
\nmove – and it works well.<\/p>\n
Musically, Anthrax was just as capable as their thrash brothers
\n(Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer), even though their popularity was
\nnever quite as high as the other named bands. Spitz whips out many
\na tasty solo on this album, while Ian’s rhythm guitar work provides
\na solid backbone (along with Bello’s bass riffs and Benante’s
\npowerful double-bass work).<\/p>\n
Yet, in a sense,
\nSpreading The Disease<\/i> seems like a disc whose full ambition
\nwas left unfulfilled in a few ways. For every killer track like
\n“A.I.R.” there’s a song like “Aftershock” that doesn’t quite live
\nup to its potential, nor does it seem to fit in with the prevalent
\nsongwriting motif. And, as stated before, Anthrax was still
\ndiscovering what they had in Belladonna – a discovery that would
\nmanifest itself one album later on their breakthrough disc,
\nAmong The Living<\/i>.<\/p>\n
By no means is
\nSpreading The Disease<\/i> a bad album; I loved it when I first
\nbought it back around 1987, and I’m having a hard time taking it
\nout of my car’s cassette deck these days. It’s well worth your time
\nand effort, but in retrospect, it seems to be only a hint at what
\nwas to come from this band.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5959],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-36490","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-anthrax","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36490"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36490"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}