Track by Track with Scott Ian
CRUSH
"We wanted 'Crush' to be like real musical equivalent of a sample or a loop - unrelenting, rhythmical, crushing. It's a reaction to all this electronic music which is supposed to be heavy. Heavy? This is what we've been doing for years with guitar, bass and drums - get real. Lyrically it's about obsession, addiction, a metaphor for drug use, or it could be someone trapped in a relationship where they're getting stepped on."
CATHARSIS
"Last year i broke into the New York Yankees's spring training centre in Florida and tried to steal a big logo mat off the field. I was very drunk. They saw me and i got arrested. But we do have a happy ending because i went on The Howard Stern Show with the Yankee's owner and i apologised, so he dropped the charges. It was the culmination of a series of misfortunes in my personal life at that time - my marrige had come to and end, everything. On the plane back to New York it was almost as if a threw up the lyrics - they came pouring out of me."
INSIDE OUT
"This is the first single. It's one of the most dynamic Anthrax songs ever written. Both John and I have been through a lot of shit together over the last two years. It's about being exactly where you want to be, but yet not having what you want."
PISS N VINEGAR
"It's my tribute to Charles Bukowski, who i touched on with 'Fueled' on 'Stomp 442'. Over the last two years i've been to live out
some of my Bukowski scripts. All i cared about was music, booze and women, not necessarily in that order."
604
"It took as long to write as it is long, and that's about 30 seconds! We have a tabloid newspaper in the States called The National Enquirer, and they ran a centerfold which had five women each fatter than the other previous - the biggest one, Dark Katrina was 604lbs! They were pictured in the front of a table with cakes and cookies and it was gross. We put it up in the studio and one day John was recordding vocals and he strated shouting 'Can't stop eating - she's so fat!" We put it to a riff and it was done in 30 seconds."
TOAST TO THE EXTRAS
"It's a follow up to 'Starting Up A Posse', but this is a serious attempt getting a southern feel. This is John's bar experience song. When you start to drink to regulary, you meet people in bars that you'll end up having really in-depth and intense conversations with, and then never see again. So it's John's toast to the guys who helped him get through a difficult time."
BORN AGAIN IDIOT
"It's not an anti-religious, it's more about how a certain type of person will constantly repeat the same mistakes over and over. You get to a point where you think it's best that these people should be put out of their misery so they can have another go in life. I have no patience with stupidity - some people need to be killed, y'know?"
KILLING BOX
"Parts of this song have an electronic feel - but again, it's our interpetation of it. The title is a military term for a manoeuvre which surrounds your enemy in a kill zone. Lyrically it's a relationship thing where i'm being an asshole in a relationship, and the other person needs a map to get out of the mine field."
HARM'S WAY
"John and I both wrote this one. He was in a relationship where he was being stepped on, where as I was doing the stepping in
mine. His opening line was: "Here comes the biggest asshole the world's ever seen ". I was very proud of him for being confident enough to bring that side of him out."
HOG TIDE
"Again, lyrically, this one is John's. This is kind of the opposite to 'Harm's Way', where he's got to where he wanted to be and he's throwing a lifeline to the next person who is still stuck, but it might be too late 'cos the guy might have already hung himself. Musically it has a great groove and a cool talk-box effect done by Charlie."
BIG FAT
"This was the first song we wrote for the record. It came out of a loose jam and it's been consistently my favourite track off the record. It's undoubtely the heaviest track Anthrax ever recorded. It's almost the vibe of 'Bring The Noise' but done as just us, not as a collaboration. Lyrically it's about how we had to look to ourselves as a band after the Elektra deal fell through, and how we had to finanance ourselves to do this record and the Pantera tour - it's our testament to our onw self-belief."
CUPAJOE
"This is like '604' - a 30 second interlude, and it's my ode to caffeine. All of Anthrax are caffeine junkies and it was our excuse to record a blast beat. Charlie invented the blast beat, so we decided to remind everyone."
ALPHA MALE
"This has a Ministry vibe to it. It has an intense beat. 'Alpha Male' is about wherever you are being the leader of the pack. We feel as a band that we have four years of our career to get back. We want to reclaim that. We don't want to go back to 1992 but we want that vibe updated to '98."
STEALING FROM A THIEF
"It's my personal diss to all these Net heads who spend their entire lives sat inside communicating electronically. It's me saying, 'Get a life!'"