Worship Music by Anthrax: The 2011 Belladonna Comeback

For most of two years between 2008 and 2010, there were two competing versions of the tenth Anthrax album. One was tracked in New York with a singer the band fired before it could come out. The other was tracked, partially over the top of the first, with a singer who had not made an Anthrax studio record since George H. W. Bush was in the White House. The lawyers eventually agreed; the record finally came out in September 2011; and the cover, painted by comic-book artist Alex Ross, did not say Worship Music by Anthrax featuring Dan Nelson, or featuring John Bush, but simply Worship Music. The credit underneath read Joey Belladonna.

That, more than any guitar tone or chorus hook, is what made Worship Music the comeback album of 2011. The "Big Four" of American thrash were on a victory lap that summer, headlining Sonisphere shows and a Yankee Stadium night with Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer. Anthrax were the only band on the bill arriving with their first new studio album in eight years, a Grammy nomination already in the post, and a singer the audience had spent two decades arguing about. The record debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200, their highest US position since 1993's [Sound of White Noise](/posts/the-making-of-sound-of-white-noise-by-anthrax/), and was hailed by AllMusic as their finest studio recording since [Persistence of Time](/posts/the-making-of-persistence-of-time-by-anthrax/) in 1990.

Album facts

Field	Detail
Artist	Anthrax
Album	Worship Music
Release date	12 September 2011 (international), 13 September 2011 (US)
Label	Megaforce Records (US), Nuclear Blast (international)
Producer	Rob Caggiano (production), Jay Ruston (mixing, additional production)
Engineer	Asim Ali; Andy Lagis (assistant)
Studios	Tracking and re-recording sessions 2008 to 2011, multiple locations
Genre	Thrash metal, heavy metal, groove metal
Track count	13 (1 hidden track; deluxe edition adds Crawl Orc Mix and an EP of covers)
Total runtime	65:43
Billboard 200 peak	12
UK Albums Chart peak	49 (No. 1 UK Rock and Metal Albums, No. 7 UK Independent Albums)
Other notable peaks	Finland 6, Germany 13, Sweden 25, Australia 35
US first-week sales	28,000 copies
US sales by Sept 2012	Approximately 100,000 copies
Key singles	Fight Em Til You Cant, The Devil You Know, In the End, I'm Alive
Grammy nomination	I'm Alive, Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, 2013 (55th Annual Grammy Awards)

The 2011 metal landscape

The year was a strange one for heavy music. Metallica, the band Anthrax had been bracketed with since their teens, released the Lou Reed collaboration Lulu in October to bafflement. Foo Fighters' Wasting Light, recorded analogue in Dave Grohl's garage, was the year's mainstream rock event. Mastodon put out The Hunter, Opeth went prog-rock with Heritage, and Iron Maiden won their first Grammy. The "Big Four" of US thrash, dormant as a unit since the 1990s, had spent 2010 and 2011 playing arenas and stadiums together for the first time, broadcast to cinemas from Sofia, Bulgaria. There was a clear appetite for thrash again, and a clear question: which of those four bands still had a great record left in them?

Anthrax were a long shot. They had not released a studio album of original material since 2003's We've Come for You All. They had cycled through three lead singers in the years since, lost their record label, sat out the entire mid-2000s nu-metal recovery, and watched Trivium and Lamb of God and Mastodon take the festival slots that used to be theirs. By the time Worship Music arrived, the gap between Anthrax studio records had grown to eight years, the longest of their career.

The band up to this point

Anthrax were formed in Queens, New York City, in July 1981 by rhythm guitarist Scott Ian and bassist Dan Lilker. After the Neil Turbin-fronted debut Fistful of Metal (1984), Joey Belladonna arrived later that year and stabilised what fans came to call the "classic" lineup with Ian, drummer Charlie Benante, lead guitarist Dan Spitz and bassist Frank Bello. The Belladonna years produced the run that put Anthrax in the Big Four: Spreading the Disease (1985), Among the Living (1987), [State of Euphoria](/posts/the-making-of-state-of-euphoria-by-anthrax/) (1988) and Persistence of Time (1990), all of them gold-certified by the RIAA.

In early 1992 Belladonna was sacked over "creative and stylistic differences" and replaced by Armored Saint frontman John Bush. The first Bush album, Sound of White Noise (1993), produced by Dave Jerden, debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, still the band's highest US chart placement. From there Anthrax slipped sideways: Stomp 442 (1995) was abandoned by Elektra mid-cycle, Volume 8: The Threat Is Real (1998) was orphaned when their indie label went bankrupt, and 2003's We've Come for You All, made for Sanctuary with Rob Caggiano now on lead guitar, was a critical hit that nobody bought (it opened at No. 122 with fewer than 10,000 first-week sales).

Bello left for Helmet in 2004. In April 2005, with the band drifting, Anthrax announced the reunion of the classic Belladonna-era lineup for a world tour. By January 2007 Scott Ian had to concede in print that "the reunion is over", and Belladonna would not commit to a new album. Bush would not return either. The job was open.

The eight-year studio gap

Eight years is a long time in heavy metal. The gap between We've Come for You All in February 2003 and Worship Music in September 2011 was the longest of Anthrax's career and remains so. Slayer made three studio albums in those eight years. Megadeth made four. Even Metallica, slowest movers in the Big Four, released [Death Magnetic](/posts/the-making-of-death-magnetic-by-metallica/). Anthrax released a live-in-the-studio re-recording, The Greater of Two Evils (2004), a "Big Four" live document filmed in Bulgaria, and a great deal of news copy about who was singing for them that month.

Scott Ian and Charlie Benante kept writing. Since Spreading the Disease Benante has been the band's principal music writer, and Ian its principal lyricist, both of them credited under the collective "Anthrax" name on the records. The riffs and arrangements that would eventually become Worship Music began arriving on Ian's monthly Food Coma column at SuicideGirls in late 2008. The question for the next two years was whose voice would be on top of them.

Pre-production and demos

In December 2007 Anthrax announced their new vocalist: Dan Nelson, formerly of the New York band Devilsize, hired alongside the returning Rob Caggiano on lead guitar. The first full Anthrax show with Nelson took place at the Double Door in Chicago in May 2008. Demos and pre-production followed quickly. Some of the songs that would later appear on Worship Music were performed live by Nelson well before they had final titles. The track that became "I'm Alive" was played in 2008 under the working title "Vampires".

One ghost hung over the early sessions: Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor had been approached to join Anthrax in 2007 and had actually started writing lyrics and trading ideas with Benante before Slipknot's label, Roadrunner Records, blocked him from doing any further work. Taylor was contractually due back for what became Slipknot's All Hope Is Gone, and Anthrax had to look elsewhere. He recalled the episode publicly in 2022, and a parallel-universe Worship Music fronted by Taylor is one of the great what-ifs of 2000s metal.

Recording with Dan Nelson

In his December 2008 Food Coma column, Scott Ian confirmed that he had been in the studio since 4 November working on the new Anthrax album. Drums, bass and rhythm guitar were arranged for 19 tracks; Nelson was already cutting vocals. Ian wrote that the band would be mixing by the end of January, and would "soon after that" be "giving birth to a really pissed off, loud, fast and heavy child." In May 2009 he announced that mixing was being handled by Dave Fortman, then best known for his work with Evanescence and Slipknot. The album had a release window. It had cover concepts. It had a singer.

It did not have a singer for long.

The Dan Nelson saga

The story split in July 2009. Anthrax manager Izvor Zivkovic told fans that Nelson was leaving the band "due to illness". Nelson, on his own MySpace, fired back the same week through Blabbermouth.net: he had been "ready, willing and able to do my job" and had not chosen to leave at all. The two sides argued through the press for weeks. Tour dates were scrubbed. The album that had been bound for a 2009 release became a record that nobody could be sure would ever come out.

The disagreement metastasised into a legal one. Anthrax and Nelson eventually reached an undisclosed settlement in 2012, three years after the split and a full year after the album that contained his vocal lines was released without him. Asked in late 2009 what would happen to the finished record, Ian was blunt: "Until we have a new singer, I can't tell you what will happen to the record. We'll probably change a few things on it, including the vocals."

"I was ready, willing and able to do my job."

Dan Nelson, Blabbermouth.net, July 2009

Eight of the thirteen songs on the eventual album (tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12 and 13) still carry a Nelson co-writing credit in the United States Copyright Office filings and on ASCAP. The lyrics and topline melodies on those songs were partly his work. His voice, however, is on none of them.

The John Bush bridge

The first thing Anthrax tried was the obvious thing. The only festival they had left on the books in summer 2009 was Sonisphere UK in August, and they asked John Bush, out of the band since 2005, to come back and front them just for that one show. He did. The crowd response was so strong that a "Bring Back Bush" fan campaign sprang up almost immediately, endorsed publicly by Scott Ian. Charlie Benante told Blabbermouth shortly afterwards that Bush had rejoined.

The reunion lasted into early 2010. Bush fronted Anthrax for five Soundwave Festival shows in Australia in February. Asked then about the new album, he said he was "trying to re-record vocals for some of the songs that had already been recorded". Some sources of the day, including Rob Caggiano in a Bravewords interview that October, indicated that Bush was going to do the album.

He didn't. By May 2010, Bush had told the band he could not commit full-time. He had a young family, an Armored Saint catalogue he was protective of, and no desire to spend the next eighteen months touring a record that had already been written, demoed and partially sung by two other people. He stepped aside cleanly. There is no Bush vocal on Worship Music.

Bringing Belladonna back

The phone call to Joey Belladonna went out in early 2010. The official Blabbermouth confirmation landed on 10 May 2010: Belladonna had rejoined Anthrax for a tour and a studio album. The agreement was for the album as well as the live work. That was the part that mattered.

Belladonna had last sung on an Anthrax studio record in 1990, when George H. W. Bush was president, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, and Persistence of Time had just been released. Twenty-one years had passed. He had spent most of that time fronting his own Joey Belladonna project and the Anthrax tribute act Chief Big Way. He had not written or sung any of the material now waiting for him in New York. Some of it had been written by Dan Nelson. He sat down and started learning songs.

"The timing is right."

John Bush on Belladonna's return to Anthrax, Blabbermouth.net, May 2010

The first Belladonna-fronted Anthrax show of the comeback was on the 2010 Sonisphere bill in June, sharing the stage in seven European cities with Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer as the first-ever proper "Big Four" tour. The Sofia, Bulgaria date was broadcast to cinemas around the world and later released as a live DVD and Blu-ray. In October at the Nassau Coliseum, Anthrax performed "Fight Em Til You Cant" with Belladonna for the first time. By December, Ian was telling fans they had two or three vocal tracks left to redo.

Creating the album

The version of Worship Music that came out in September 2011 is a hybrid record. Some of the songs were left as they had been finished with Nelson on top, with Belladonna's vocals overdubbed onto the same instrumental tracks. Others were rewritten. Several were composed from scratch with Belladonna in mind. The drum, bass and rhythm guitar performances Charlie Benante, Frank Bello and Scott Ian had committed to tape in late 2008 had to either survive the new singer or be re-cut to fit him.

Rob Caggiano took the producer's chair himself, with veteran metal mixer Jay Ruston handling the mix and credited with additional production. Asim Ali engineered; Andy Lagis was assistant engineer. The mixing duties originally floated for Dave Fortman were quietly retired with the Nelson era. Recording wrapped in April 2011, which the band immediately tagged in interviews as their "most emotional album". Mastering was completed in late June. The cover art landed in July.

Some signature production choices stand out across the finished record:

• Frank Bello's bass is unusually high in the mix for an Anthrax record, with bell-clear pick attack on "Fight Em Til You Cant" and "Earth on Hell".
• Belladonna's vocals are often double or triple-tracked into a wide stereo image, a deliberate counterweight to Nelson's narrower, drier delivery on the original takes.
• The two short instrumental "Hymn" tracks, written as orchestral choral interludes, were placed unlisted on the running order rather than as named tracks.
• Cellist Alison Chesley (Helen Money) contributed cello to the record, the only outside instrumentalist credited.
• The closing track "Revolution Screams" hides a full cover of Refused's "New Noise" eleven minutes in, after five minutes of silence on the CD.

Personnel and credits

Role	Player	Notes
Core band
Lead vocals	Joey Belladonna	First Anthrax studio album since Persistence of Time (1990)
Lead guitar, backing vocals	Rob Caggiano	Final studio album with Anthrax; left for Volbeat in January 2013
Rhythm guitar, backing vocals	Scott Ian	Principal lyricist; only constant member of the band since 1981
Bass, backing vocals	Frank Bello	His most prominent bass mix on an Anthrax record
Drums	Charlie Benante	Principal music writer since Spreading the Disease
Guest musician
Cello	Alison Chesley	Also known as Helen Money
Production and engineering
Producer	Rob Caggiano
Mixing, additional production	Jay Ruston
Engineer	Asim Ali
Assistant engineer	Andy Lagis
Artwork and photography
Cover artwork	Alex Ross	The Marvel and DC painter behind Kingdom Come and Marvels
Cover concept	Charlie Benante	Suggested the title after a US TV show of the same name
Artwork and design	Douglas Heusser
Photography	Ross Halfin
Earlier sessions (not on final mix)
Vocals (scrapped takes)	Dan Nelson	Tracked 2008 to 2009; co-writing credit retained on eight songs
Mixer (proposed, replaced)	Dave Fortman	Announced as mixer for the Nelson version in 2009; not on the released album

The songs

All thirteen songs are credited to Belladonna, Bello, Benante and Ian, except the hidden cover of Refused's "New Noise". Eight songs additionally carry a Dan Nelson co-write. Belladonna had no writing input on the album that bears his voice.

#	Title	Writer(s)	Length	Single?	Notes
1	Worship	Anthrax	1:40		Instrumental opener; choral and orchestral overture
2	Earth on Hell	Anthrax, Nelson	3:10		Politically charged opener; Ian later cited Arab Spring as a parallel
3	The Devil You Know	Anthrax, Nelson	4:46	Yes (2)	About WWII veterans, not the vampire novel; "let the right one in"
4	Fight Em Til You Cant	Anthrax, Nelson	5:48	Yes (1)	Zombie apocalypse single; released as a free download in June 2011
5	I'm Alive	Anthrax, Nelson	5:36	Yes (4)	Premiered live in 2008 as "Vampires"; Grammy-nominated 2013
6	Hymn 1	Anthrax	0:38		Unlisted instrumental interlude
7	In the End	Anthrax	6:48	Yes (3)	Dual tribute to Ronnie James Dio and Dimebag Darrell
8	The Giant	Anthrax, Nelson	3:46		Compact mid-album thrasher
9	Hymn 2	Anthrax	0:44		Unlisted instrumental interlude
10	Judas Priest	Anthrax	6:24		Tribute to the band, with bridge referencing several Priest songs
11	Crawl	Anthrax, Nelson	5:28		Slow, melodic; the song most reviewers split on
12	The Constant	Anthrax, Nelson	5:01		Named for an episode of TV's Lost
13	Revolution Screams	Anthrax, Nelson	15:54		Song ends at 6:08; hidden cover of Refused's "New Noise" at 11:08

"Worship" opens the record like the prologue to a fantasy film: orchestral pads, choral voices and a brittle clean guitar arpeggio that resolves into the staccato chug of "Earth on Hell". The Ian lyric here addresses American political dysfunction; in late-2011 interviews he was happy to draw parallels with the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy Wall Street, though the song was written long before either event.

"The Devil You Know" is the album's first true single, a mid-tempo stomp built around a sub-octave riff and a Belladonna chorus you can hear at the back of a sports arena. Despite the line "Let the right one in", and the band's long history of borrowing from horror novels, Ian has said the song is about World War II veterans, not John Ajvide Lindqvist's vampire novel.

"Fight Em Til You Cant" is the zombie apocalypse song. The band gave it away as a free download on 24 June 2011 as a thank-you to fans who had waited eight years for new material. It also became their first proper music video of the album cycle.

"I'm Alive" is the album's emotional centre and was the song that earned Anthrax their 2013 Grammy nomination. It opens with a tribal-sounding clean-guitar intro over a marching snare, breaks into a tense verse riff and resolves into a melodic, sweeping chorus. The song had been in the live set since 2008 under the working title "Vampires". Belladonna delivers the chorus in his upper register, and it is the clearest single argument anywhere on the record for why the band re-cut the vocals.

"In the End" is the album's seven-minute centrepiece, dedicated jointly to Ronnie James Dio (who died in May 2010) and Pantera's Dimebag Darrell (shot on stage in December 2004). Both men were Anthrax intimates: Dio was an inspiration; Darrell had played lead guitar parts on three earlier Anthrax records. The track works in two halves, a heavy riff-driven elegy that breaks into a soaring melodic refrain, and the band has played it live almost every night since.

"Judas Priest" is exactly what it sounds like: a tribute song to the British metal pioneers, with a bridge that quietly references several Priest songs in a row. "The Constant" takes its title and theme from the episode of the 2004 ABC television series Lost, in which Desmond Hume travels through time until he locks onto his "constant". Closer "Revolution Screams" runs to 15:54 only because the band hid a full cover of Refused's 1998 hardcore standard "New Noise" inside it, separated from the song proper by five minutes of silence.

Singles and music videos

Single	Released	Notes
Fight Em Til You Cant	24 June 2011	Free download via Nuclear Blast as a thank-you to waiting fans
The Devil You Know	9 August 2011	Followed by official music video on Anthrax's channel
In the End	17 November 2011	Dio and Dimebag tribute
I'm Alive	4 January 2012	Grammy-nominated for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance (2013)

The lead-single decision was made on the album's most overtly anthemic, zombie-themed song. Releasing it as a free download rather than a paid digital single, three months before the album landed, signalled the band's nervousness about whether the audience was still there and the label's confidence that the audience was, in fact, still there. "The Devil You Know" became the first proper video, with Belladonna in the band's modern logo T-shirt and the rest of the group performing in a high-contrast urban set.

B-sides and the hidden track

The Japanese edition added an exclusive bonus track, "Crawl (Orc Mix)", an alternate version of the album track. The hidden cover of Refused's "New Noise" at the end of "Revolution Screams" doubled as the band's nod to the late-90s hardcore record that several of them rated highly. Beyond those, the most interesting unreleased material from this era is the original Dan Nelson vocal tapes for the eight songs he co-wrote. These recordings the band have never officially released and which have circulated only as bootlegs.

Anthems and the special edition

In summer 2012 Frank Bello told Bravewords that the band intended to reissue Worship Music with bonus covers of Rush and Boston songs. Five covers were ultimately included on the Anthems bonus EP: Rush's "Anthem", Boston's "Smokin'", Black Sabbath's "Neon Knights", AC/DC's "T.N.T." and Journey's "Keep on Runnin'". The EP also added two new versions of "Crawl" from the main album.

Anthrax announced the package as a 2012 release but ultimately pushed it to 22 March 2013. Anthems was issued separately in Europe by Nuclear Blast on the same day (three days earlier in North America), and bundled with the original album as the Worship Music: Special Edition. "Neon Knights" subsequently became Anthrax's fifth Grammy nomination, in 2015, for Best Metal Performance, alongside their AC/DC cover "T.N.T.", which had been nominated the previous year.

Album artwork by Alex Ross

The cover was painted by Alex Ross, the American comic-book artist best known for the photorealistic painted covers of Marvel's Marvels (1994) and DC's Kingdom Come (1996). Charlie Benante is credited with the cover concept and suggested the album's title after a US television show of the same name. Douglas Heusser handled artwork design, and Ross Halfin, longtime metal portraitist, shot the band photography that accompanied the package.

Hiring Ross was not a left-field choice for Anthrax. Their classic-era artwork had borrowed openly from Marvel Comics; their original "Not Man" mascot had grown out of a rubber children's toy that Charlie Benante kept on his drum riser. Putting Ross on the cover was a way of formally reuniting the band's comics aesthetic with its musical comeback, eighteen years after Belladonna's original era ended.

Release and chart performance

Nuclear Blast released Worship Music internationally on Monday 12 September 2011. Megaforce Records, who had released Anthrax's debut Fistful of Metal back in 1984, put it out in the United States a day later on 13 September. The split is a quirk of release-day conventions in the two territories rather than a delay; the marketing campaign was unified.

Territory	Chart	Peak
United States	Billboard 200	12
United States	Independent Albums	2
United States	Top Hard Rock Albums	4
United States	Top Rock Albums	5
United Kingdom	Albums Chart	49
United Kingdom	Rock and Metal Albums	1
United Kingdom	Independent Albums	7
Finland	Suomen virallinen lista	6
Germany	Offizielle Top 100	13
Sweden	Sverigetopplistan	25
Czech Republic	CNS IFPI	28
Switzerland	Schweizer Hitparade	28
Japan	Oricon	28
Austria	Ö3 Austria	30
Canada	Billboard Canadian Albums	33
Australia	ARIA	35
Italy	FIMI	37
UK Scotland	OCC	35
Belgium (Flanders)	Ultratop	65

The 28,000 first-week US sales translated to the No. 12 Billboard 200 debut, which was both the band's third-highest US chart placement ever (after For All Kings in 2016 at No. 9 and Sound of White Noise in 1993 at No. 7) and an order of magnitude better than We've Come for You All's 2003 opening, which had managed under 10,000 first-week sales for a No. 122 debut. By September 2012, Worship Music had passed 100,000 copies sold in the United States.

Critical response

Metacritic aggregated reviews to 75 out of 100, with the strongest praise coming from AllMusic, Loudwire, IGN and Classic Rock. AllMusic's Greg Prato judged the album the band's "finest studio recording since Persistence of Time (1990)" and observed that, in spite of the Nelson chaos, the record fits together "seamlessly". The A.V. Club's Jason Heller awarded a B and credited the album with finally clearing the "nu-metal stench" from the band's late-Bush albums.

"Worship Music is a mixture of the grinding power of We've Come for You All and the more clear-cut melodic approach of Among the Living, resulting in an album that is violently metallic yet sophisticated."

Malcolm Dome, Classic Rock, September 2011

Loudwire's Matthew Wilkening, in the four-and-a-half star September 2011 review that the band quoted in nearly every subsequent interview, declared that Belladonna's 20-year absence "has not affected the band's chemistry at all", and called the album proof of "maturity and musical growth". IGN's Chad Grischow scored it 8.5 out of 10 and singled out only "Crawl" as a "rare misstep on the otherwise fantastic album". Kerrang! were less convinced (three stars, plus the line that the band were "creative and explorative, restless and even daring" but, for the most part, "not that good"). The Los Angeles Times' Mikael Wood drew the contrast that defined the year: where Metallica had spent 2011 making Lulu with Lou Reed, Anthrax had opted to "reclaim ground" already dominated by younger bands.

End-of-year lists rewarded the comeback. Loudwire and Metal Rules both placed Worship Music at No. 1 on their best-of-2011 metal lists. Spin placed it seventh on theirs.

Touring and live

Anthrax spent the next two years on the road for the album. The campaign began with the summer 2011 Big Four shows alongside Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth, peaking with the four bands sharing the bill at Yankee Stadium in New York on 14 September, the day after the US release. Due to the birth of his child, Scott Ian missed the European leg; Sepultura's Andreas Kisser stood in on rhythm guitar, with Ian joining the band onstage for half the set in Milan.

From October to November 2011, Anthrax co-headlined a 23-date US tour with Testament, with Death Angel opening. The three bands re-teamed in early 2012 and again in autumn 2012. Anthrax played the Jägermeister side stage at the Mayhem Festival 2012 (co-headlined by Slayer and Slipknot) and toured the UK with Motörhead in November 2012. In 2013 they headlined the third annual Metal Alliance Tour in the US, performing Among the Living in its entirety; their Santiago, Chile show on that run was filmed for the live DVD Chile on Hell.

Notable live moments from the cycle include:

• The Sofia, Bulgaria Sonisphere Big Four show (June 2010, pre-album), broadcast worldwide to cinemas and released on home video as The Big Four: Live from Sofia, Bulgaria.
• The Yankee Stadium Big Four show, 14 September 2011, one day after Worship Music's US release.
• Anthrax's first-ever Filipino headline at Pulp Summer Slam in April 2011, with Death Angel and Hellyeah.
• The 2013 Metal Alliance Tour, on which Anthrax performed Among the Living front to back nightly.
• A 2013 Australian leg in which Charlie Benante sat out for personal reasons, replaced by drummer Jon Dette.

Corey Taylor and the near-miss

The Corey Taylor episode merits its own mention. Taylor confirmed in a 2022 interview with Metal Hammer's Martin Kielty that, in 2007, he had been approached to join Anthrax. He started writing lyrics with Charlie Benante and trading ideas. Slipknot's label Roadrunner intervened: Taylor was contracted to deliver Slipknot's All Hope Is Gone and could not divide his commercial attention. The Anthrax slot went to Dan Nelson instead. The path of three Anthrax albums and most of two Slipknot albums hinges on that single label phone call.

Awards and accolades

Worship Music earned Anthrax their fourth Grammy nomination: "I'm Alive" was nominated for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2013. The same year-end cycle saw the band nominated for four Revolver Golden Gods Awards, including Album of the Year and Comeback of the Year, and three Loudwire Music Awards (Live Act of the Year, Metal Song of the Year and Metal Band of the Year). "I'm Alive" also won the inaugural Loudwire Cage Match Hall of Fame in January 2012. Classic Rock magazine handed Anthrax the Metal Guru prize at the 2012 Classic Rock Roll of Honour, and Metal Hammer awarded them the "Metal As Fuck" Golden God in the same year.

Covers, samples and tributes

The covering itself went both ways. Anthrax covered Refused's "New Noise" as the hidden track on the album, and Rush, Boston, Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Journey on the Anthems EP a year and a half later. The AC/DC cover "T.N.T." was Anthrax's 2014 Grammy nomination (Best Metal Performance), and "Neon Knights" was their 2015 nomination. "In the End" became one of the most-covered Anthrax tracks of the modern era, with a steady stream of cover versions posted by tribute acts and YouTube musicians since 2011, in part because the dual Dio and Dimebag dedication makes it a natural choice for metal-community tribute occasions.

Reissues and anniversaries

The 2013 Worship Music: Special Edition double-disc package, bundling the original album with the Anthems covers EP, is the only major reissue to date. A 2020 CD re-pressing and a 2022 180-gram vinyl edition have kept the record continuously in print on physical media. The album has not yet received a dedicated anniversary super-deluxe box with the original Dan Nelson vocal stems, demos and alternate mixes. It is a project fans have asked the band about repeatedly. The full pre-Belladonna vocal takes remain unreleased.

Rob Caggiano's departure

In January 2013, four months into the album's touring afterlife, Rob Caggiano abruptly left Anthrax to join Danish rockers Volbeat. He had produced Worship Music, played all of its lead guitar parts, contributed backing vocals, and helped engineer the whole rescue operation around it. Jonathan Donais of Shadows Fall was hired as touring lead guitarist and confirmed as a full member that August. He has been Anthrax's lead guitarist ever since.

"Worship Music sounds as fresh and eruptive as ever."

Chad Grischow, IGN, 12 September 2011

Legacy and influence

Worship Music is the album that put Anthrax back into the conversation as a current band, rather than a Big Four legacy act. The Belladonna lineup it cemented (Belladonna, Ian, Bello, Benante, and from 2013 onwards Donais) has remained intact for more than fifteen years and is, as of mid-2026, by some margin the longest-serving lineup in Anthrax's history. The album's commercial trajectory was matched by For All Kings in 2016, which debuted one place higher on the Billboard 200 at No. 9. The long-delayed twelfth Anthrax studio record, Cursum Perficio, is scheduled for September 2026, and is being made with the same singer who finally gave Worship Music a voice.

Within the Big Four, Worship Music sits comfortably alongside Megadeth's Endgame (2009) and Slayer's World Painted Blood (2009) as proof that the older-generation US thrash bands could still make relevant records past the genre's commercial peak. It is widely regarded by fans and critics as the best Anthrax studio album since 1990 and the high-water mark of the band's second Belladonna era. Among contemporaries, Trivium's Matt Heafy, Lamb of God's Randy Blythe and Killswitch Engage's Adam Dutkiewicz have all praised the record in interviews.

Things you might not know

Fact	Detail
The 19-track demo	By December 2008, Scott Ian had recorded drums, bass and rhythm guitars for 19 songs with Dan Nelson; only 13 made the released album, and none with Nelson's vocals.
The Corey Taylor what-if	Slipknot's Corey Taylor was approached to front Anthrax in 2007 and started writing with Charlie Benante before Roadrunner Records blocked him from continuing.
The fired-mixer announcement	Dave Fortman, then known for his work with Evanescence and Slipknot, was announced as the album's mixer in May 2009 by Scott Ian; he did not mix the released version.
Songs with two singers credited	Eight of the thirteen songs still carry Dan Nelson as a co-writer in the US Copyright Office filings, even though his voice appears on none of them.
The free download single	"Fight Em Til You Cant" was released on 24 June 2011 as a free download via Nuclear Blast, a thank-you to fans for eight years of patience.
The hidden Refused cover	Closing track "Revolution Screams" runs 15:54 only because Anthrax buried a full cover of Refused's "New Noise" inside it, after five minutes of silence.
Belladonna's 21-year studio gap	Worship Music was Belladonna's first Anthrax studio album since Persistence of Time in 1990.
The 28,000 first week	The US debut at No. 12 came from 28,000 first-week sales, more than twice We've Come for You All's entire opening week eight years earlier.
The Alex Ross hire	Cover painter Alex Ross is the same artist behind Marvel's Marvels and DC's Kingdom Come; Charlie Benante is credited with the cover concept.
The Lost reference	"The Constant" takes its title and theme from a 2008 episode of the ABC TV series Lost, in which Desmond Hume travels through time until he locks onto his "constant".
The Vampires demo	"I'm Alive" had been in the live set since 2008 under the working title "Vampires"; Belladonna never sang it under either title before re-cutting it for the record.
The Andreas Kisser stand-in	Scott Ian missed the European Big Four 2011 leg for the birth of his child; Sepultura's Andreas Kisser played his rhythm-guitar parts in his place.
The Caggiano farewell	Rob Caggiano produced the entire record and played every lead guitar on it, then quit Anthrax for Volbeat in January 2013, four months into the touring cycle.
The settlement	Anthrax and Dan Nelson reached an undisclosed settlement in June 2012, three years after his exit and nine months after the album was released without him.
The Yankee Stadium night	The day after the US release, Anthrax played the Big Four show at Yankee Stadium in New York with Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer.

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