Coming off the back of the excellent We’ve Come For You All the boys decided to update some older material. Taking the best of the stuff that the band had recorded with previous singers Neil Turbin and Joey Belladonna, they re-recorded them with their current line-up, including John Bush on vocals. Not only did they re-record them, they changed most of them just a little – a bit heavier, or a bit slower, or a bit faster – to complete the transformation.
In most cases, they work. The update of “Deathrider” and “Panic” are especially great - a thousand times better than the original versions, and John Bush smokes on the vocals. It really is a wonder that Anthrax haven’t ever re-recorded the entire Fistful of Metal album at some stage, giving it the polish and heaviness that it truly deserves. But that’s another review, and one I’ve already done.
The rest of the album, I guess, fans will either love or hate. I think it has its place.
There are some of the songs that are pure Belladonna (“I Am The Law”, “Be All, End All”), and even though the versions done here are great, you can’t help but know that it sounded better with Joey on the microphone.
Other versions are so good (“Gung Ho”, “Lone Justice”, “Madhouse”), you can just see JB as the original vocalist of the song. Of course the songs have been tooled around a bit to suit John’s vocal chords, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The most important part is that they still sound great.
As a variation on the same tired ‘greatest hits’ package, this is another pearler. As they were all pretty much played in a 'live' setting in the studio, with the band thrashing out and Bush coming in later to clean up, you can hear the fun the band was having in recording them. It gives the fan an incentive to actually buy the album rather than say “I already have all these songs”. Which is what I did, and I still love it.
Rating: A great concept with wonderful execution. 4.5/5
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