LimeWire Music Blog

If you’ve ever gotten trashed in bar full of former straight-edgers, there are topics probably best left unaddressed. Be it the hilarity of hardliners or the relationship of grind to powerviolence, it’s not worth it.  Seriously, listen to me on this. And for the love of God, if it comes down to who invented the blast beat dive, don’t think, just dive. When recently accused in The Quietus of introducing the punk/metal/hardcore/grind/powerviolence/thrash convention to a world of kids with way too much time on their hands, Anthrax’s current drummer and former percussionist of Storm Troopers of Death, Charlie Benante denied sole culpability. Sort of.

CB: "Ha! If you mean that I decided to sit in my room and invent it, noit wasn’t like that. The thing was something that had been around theNY hardcore scene for ages but hadn’t been used for other things. Thefirst time it really happened was on S.O.D’s ‘Milk’ song, so I guessyou could say I had a lot to do with it. Now a lot of bands are usingit, and doing it really well."  

After a seven year lull, Anthrax have a new album due out in May on Nuclear Blast. Titled Worship Music, it will feature brand new singer Dan Nelson, who Benanti compares to the band’s sixth singer, John Bush. (Nelson is actually number eight.) And as for the blast beat, I think we should treat it the way we treat Anthrax, whose former members are legion. Rather than a specific event, isolatable to a particular agency, we might see it as social movement, swelling as the result of innumerable contributors, each with the burning desire to hit the simplest rhythm imaginable as fast as freaking possible.