Ten years. That’s how long Anthrax made us wait — and Cursum Perficio sounds like they spent every minute of it sharpening the knives. The New York thrash lifers drop their twelfth album on September 18, their first since 2016’s For All Kings, and the early word is a band reborn, not resting.
Two rounds have already been fired. Lead single “It’s for the Kids” is a full-circle gut-punch, its video restaging the asylum mayhem of the classic “Madhouse” clip. Then came “The Edge of Perfection,” a towering near-seven-minute epic the band is calling some of the best work of their career.
The title is Latin for “my journey is complete” — a heavy thing to name a record — and the cover, painted by artist Mark Stritzel, is crowded with characters that drummer Charlie Benante says each carry their own backstory, rolled out in weekly animated teasers.
And they’re not sitting still. This fall Anthrax step onto stadium stages as support on Iron Maiden’s Run For Your Lives run alongside Megadeth — hitting Montréal, Harrison, Los Angeles and San Antonio, plus a Louder Than Life festival stop. Four decades deep, and the mosh is still theirs.