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If anyone had doubts that Anthrax are still capable of making strong music, then here’s the proof.

Eight years on from their last album, We’ve Come For You All, and more than two decades since Joey Belladonna last sung with them in the studio, the band have returned with one of their finest albums.

Musically it takes the grinding power of We’ve Come… and adds the more clear-cut melodic approach of ’87’s classic Among The Living, plus a slight hint of industrial influence. The result is a powerful collection of songs which manage to be violently metallic yet sophisticated.

This isn’t Anthrax contriving a future by regrouping. Belladonna’s tuneful style complements the riffing virulence so well that it’s hard to imagine anybody else doing these songs justice. The overall impression is of a dangerous ferment of dirty-bomb explosive plus rousingly jagged, anthemic groove on the likes of Fight ’Em Till You Can’t, In The End and Judas Priest.

After a time in the wilderness, Anthrax are back – to their best.

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.