Has it really been ten years since Anthrax last released an album? In one sense it’s hard to believe, partly because For All Kings still feels fresh now. On the other hand, the band have ostensibly been playing the same set list for what feels like forever, so a new album was more or less mandated at this point.
Not that it’s been an easy process. The band were talking about a follow-up to For All Kings as early as 2018 while, in a 2025 interview, drummer Charlie Benante suggested that the band had thrown out a bunch of tunes and started all over again.
At any event, the final result is Cursum Perficio (My journey has come to an end), an eleven-track album that finds the band on particularly fine form, especially when one considers the torturous process it took to get here.
The album starts not with a bang, but with an eerie introductory piece, Persistence of Memory (which could either be a reference to the 1931 painting from Salvador Dalí or Stephen King’s IT). A short track, it’s little more than a scene setter before the pummelling riff of The Long Goodbye comes strutting on to the stage. Honestly, it’s so Anthrax, you can’t help but picture Scott Ian stomping across the boards in his shorts, with only the slightly treble-heavy production detracting from an otherwise exceptional album opening gambit. Where the track excels, however, is when lead guitarist Jonathan Donais unleashes a series of frantic solos with unfettered glee before turning the stage over to Joey for one last blazing chorus.
Next up, the unhinged introduction to It’s For The Kids shows that Anthrax have lost none of their skill for getting the audience to sit up and pay attention. Nailed down hard by Charlie’s relentless percussion, it’s a full-bore thrash anthem and you can only sit back and bask in the knowledge that Anthrax still care enough to make music that hits this damn hard.
Having firmly slammed the gauntlet down, Anthrax keep things hard and fast on Everybody’s Got A Plan, although the welcome melody on the chorus ensures the track is as memorable as it is heavy, an aspect of the band’s songwriting that all too often goes unsung. It’s followed by The Edge Of Perfection, a remarkable, seven-minute tour de force touted by Scott as “the greatest song in the history of Anthrax”. It’s a bold claim, to be sure, up against some damn stiff competition and, while it can’t quite compete with the youthful surge of excitement that greeted the likes of I Am The Law, Caught In A Mosh or Indians, it is surely up there – no mean feat for a band on their twelfth outing. Honestly, though, while The Edge Of Perfection is a brilliantly executed piece of music, it’s damn near upstaged by the mid-tempo Infectious, which has an irresistible simplicity to it, not to mention a fantastic, layered vocal from an on-fire Belladonna.
It’s back to straight ahead thrash on the blistering NYC 93, which relates the band’s experiences of being a rock band on the rise over a clattering backdrop that is full of youthful vim and vigour. It lacks the complex dynamics of its predecessor, perhaps, and it’s soon upstaged when the band head back to mid-tempo territory for the title track, which wisely leaves plenty of space for Joey’s excellent vocals. Is it a farewell from the band? Well, subsequent interviews would suggest not but the lyrics surely do point to a band questioning their place in an increasingly unforgiving world.
If the title track waxes melancholic (insofar as such an adjective can be applied to Anthrax), T.O.M.B. is an absolute monster that simply unloads on the hapless listener with ferocious power, the band switching deftly between mid-tempo groove and full-throttle assault with ease, while Frank Bello’s bass run is the stuff of legends. Neither are Anthrax done, for Watch It Go comes tearing out of an icy blast of feedback, Charlie reducing his kit to matchwood in the process. This surprisingly concise album wraps up with the explosive My Victory, a brilliantly arranged track that brings together the album’s many different facets in one compelling, five-minute song.
It may have been ten years since the last album but, honestly, the strength of Cursum Perficio makes it feel like moments, with the bulk of the songs landing hard and several (The Edge Of Perfection, Infectious, and My Victory) among the finest the band have ever penned. The only mild gripe is a treble-heavy production that, at times, even verges on the thin. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s a shame they didn’t go with a slightly darker production to really tease out the depth of the mid-tempo riffs the band deploy with such effect. Whatever, I’m just happy to have new Anthrax material and, with the band on this sort of form, you find yourself thinking that this just can’t be the end – Anthrax are just too damn good. 8.5/10
