You have played on every album since Anthrax’s first album, A Fistful of Metal, in 1984. It is 40 years since then. Can you believe you are still together?
No, I can’t. I can only be reminded of that when somebody mentions it to me. I would remember years ago when The Beatles Sergeant Pepper turned 30.
These days time doesn’t add up like it used to do years ago. My daughter is 18 years [old]. Five years ago is a long time ago for her. Five years for me – I don’t even think about it any more.
Has the music industry in those 40 years changed for the better or worse?
There is no music industry. That’s what has changed.
There is nothing any more. There are people listening to music, but they are not listening to music the way music was once listened to.
The Young Offenders Christmas Special review: Where’s Jock? Without him, Conor’s firearm foxer isn’t quite a cracker
Restaurant of the year, best value and Michelin predictions: Our reviewer’s top picks of 2024
When Claire Byrne confronts Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary on RTÉ, the atmosphere is seriously tetchy
It’s a different time now. Here’s a strange thing. While I have seen people eating a little bit more healthy here and there, the industry of music was one of things hit the worst and nobody did anything about it. They just let it happen. There was no protection, no nothing.
Subconsciously this may be the reason why we don’t make records every three years or whatever because I don’t want to give it away for free.
I take music very seriously and what I do and what I write is very personal and, for someone to take it is not right.
It is like I pay Amazon $12.99 (€12.32) a month and I can just go on Amazon and I can get whatever I want.
It is basically stealing. It is stealing from the artist – the people who run music streaming sites like Spotify.
I don’t subscribe to Spotify. I think it is where music goes to die.
We have the music on there because we have to play along with the f*****g game, but I’m tired of playing the game.
We get taken advantage of the most out of any industry. As artists, we have no health coverage, we have nothing.
They f**ked us so bad, I don’t know how we come out of it.
You’d probably make more money selling lemonade on the corner.
Metallica sued Napster back in the early 2000s for infringement of copyright and got a lot of stick for it from fans. Looking back, do you think they were right to take that case?
They were absolutely right about it. You see where it went.
All those people who said, ‘f**k Metallica, they are rich b******s’.
They were protecting their art, their intellectual property so that some a****le does not come along and take your art.
They make the money while you just make the art and you just give it away.
People don’t know anything about this. Until you have lived the way we live and do what we have done, then you can comment on it.
You came of age when people were still going out and buying records and the buyers had a sense of ownership of the music because they paid for it. At least you saw some of that in the 1980s and 1990s when thrash was at its height.
Those times were so important. You open it up and you can smell it. You are listening to it as you are reading the liner notes and everything that band or artist put into that record.
It was so valid and it is not valid any more. Of course things change, and we know this, but I just wish it hadn’t changed so drastically that you can’t enjoy it the way you once did.
It must be so much harder for more heavy metal bands. Would you like to be setting out on your music career now rather than in the 1980s?
No I wouldn’t, but I would say that I don’t know what mainstream is any more because Metallica and Pantera play stadiums, and that’s the mainstream [in metal].
I don’t understand where 65 or 70 per cent of those people who attend stadium concerts go when the band [support act] comes back into town by themselves. We could play to a stadium with 70,000 people with Metallica, but you come back into town and you play to 20,000. Where have all the fans gone or maybe they just don’t like you? [he laughs]
Why do you still do it?
This is in my blood. When I was younger I had Kiss posters all over my room. This is what I aspired to do.
I’m doing more now than I have ever done. It’s great. I’m so creative because I’m working on a new album with Anthrax and I’m working on a record with Carla [Harvey]’s new band The Violet Hour [the pair are now engaged].
That’s a bunch of great songs that I’m very proud of. Touring with Pantera it is just great. I love doing the Pantera thing. It makes me happy and I love those guys in the band. [He toured with the band on their comeback tour last year and this year].
There are rumours there is a new Anthrax album in the mix. Is that correct?
We have been working on this record for a long time. Certain aspects of it didn’t come together as quickly as I would have liked.
We have had time to sit on it and I know fans are just waiting for it, but we want it to be right.
We want it to be the best thing that we could put out at this point just because of our integrity and how we feel.
When you get into the mode of making a record and the creativity starts to flow and those things start to come back and you make music again and the riffs come out of nowhere, it is the greatest feeling when that happens.
There is that Anthrax sound. We don’t have a potential release date yet.
We did some of it in Dave Grohl’s studio. Some of the guys were back there last week doing vocal so we are making progress.
The only thing is that this tour will take us away from making that record.
This is your first European tour since 2019. You have a great line-up. Are you looking forward to it?
We are dusting off songs to try and introduce some songs we haven’t played in quite a long time. We are going to try and give it a go.
You can expect some full-on thrash metal from our first, second and third records, and some songs we haven’t played in years.
You and Carla recently got engaged at the U2 concert in Las Vegas. Are you a big fan of the band?
Ireland has always been a good warm place for us. Metal bands don’t come into Ireland as much. Sometimes they skip Ireland, but we aren’t.
I was always a big U2 fan back in the day. There were two other bands I really loved, UFO and Thin Lizzy. I saw UFO a bunch of times, but not Thin Lizzy.
Going back to U2, they were one of the bands in the post-punk era that I thought, “this band has something”. I just love their songs. They didn’t play well when they first came out.
They just got better and better as musicians and songwriters. If you want to do band growth 101, follow the career of U2 because it is such a great path.
Anthrax, Kreator and Testament are playing the 3Arena on Monday, November 25th. Tickets are priced from €72.50
