ANTHRAX has played more Sonisphere festivals around Europe than any other band and was featured at Knebworth for every U.K. edition of the festival. But this summer, they went one better by performing not once, but twice at Knebworth. Not content with already playing on the Apollo stage on Saturday, July 5, they took advantage of a day off on the Friday, July 4 to give those in Bohemia a special treat, by stomping their way through their classic "Among The Living" album in full, in a sweaty, heaving tent.Prior to taking the stage on Friday, ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian told NME about the prospect of performing the entire "Among The Living" album: "We've done all the songs in a concert before, but we've broken it up. Like, we'done it side A, and then played a bunch of other stuff, and then side B and then do some encores. So we've done it in that context. But tonight we're only playing the nine songs off 'Among The Living', so it's the first time ever."Regarding the recording process for "Among The Living", Scott said: "We had just come off the METALLICA tour in the fall of '86 when [METALLICA bassist] Cliff Burton was killed, and we had come off that tour obviously early because of the tragedy. And that's when we started recording that record, pretty much right after that. I feel like the energy just really jumps off that record; you fucking hear how pissed off we are playing our instruments on that record. There's a brutality on that album that you don't hear on the two records before 'Among The Living'. It was just the record of its time; it really was." Fan-filmed video footage of ANTHRAX's July 4 performance of the entire "Among The Living" album at Sonisphere can be seen below.When ANTHRAX's "Among The Living" full-album performance at Sonisphere was first announced in May, Ian said: "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (1986, New York City) we wrote a record that at the time, we had no idea would become our 'signature' record. We had a song about the plight of the American Indian, we had songs about Stephen King characters (Randall Flagg from 'The Stand' and Todd Bowden from 'Apt Pupil'), we had a song dedicated to Cliff Burton and another about John Belushi's clichéd death. We had a song about Judge fucking Dredd and we had a song called 'Caught In A Mosh'. We had SONGS. "When 'Among The Living' punched the world in the face in 1987, it launched ANTHRAX into a high-speed trajectory that we could barely keep up with. Like going from 0-200 kph in 5 seconds flat. Our heads were spinning as fast as they were banging and 27 years later nothing has changed. "We love to play these songs and people love to hear them so we're really fucking excited to be doing this special show the day before our main-stage performance at Sonisphere Knebworth playing (for the first time ever) just the 'Among The Living' record for you, our U.K. faithful! It's gonna be sick."ANTHRAX was nominated for a "Best Metal Performance" Grammy this year for its cover of AC/DC's "T.N.T." The track was featured on ANTHRAX's eight-track EP that pays tribute to the classic songs by some of the band's favorite acts from the 1970s. The CD was released in North America on March 19, 2013 (MRI/Megaforce), and on March 22, 2013 in Europe (Nuclear Blast). ANTHRAX's next album will mark the recording debut with the band of guitarist Jon Donais (also of SHADOWS FALL), who replaced Rob Caggiano in January 2013.Regarding whether Donais is now officially an ANTHRAX member, Ian told Metal Insider: "For all intents and purposes, he's in ANTHRAX. He's going to be there for everything we do moving forward. As far as how you title it, yeah. As far as I'm concerned, Jon is in ANTHRAX and will be playing leads on the record and will be touring with the band starting at the end of May 2014.""Worship Music" has sold more than 110,000 copies in the United States since its September 2011 release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
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