Anthrax Announce First Album in a Decade, New Song Out Friday

Anthrax will release their long-awaited 12th album, Cursum Perficio, on Sept. 18, marking their first full-length studio effort in over a decade.

They’ll preview the album with lead single “It’s for the Kids,” which arrives this Friday. You can pre-save the song now.

What to Expect From Anthrax’s ‘Cursum Perficio’

Cursum Perficio follows Anthrax’s For All Kings, which the thrash giants released in February 2016. The Latin phrase was engraved on a tile at the entryway of Marilyn Monroe’s final home. Although many people have interpreted the phrase to mean “My journey ends,” it translates more literally to “I will persevere” or “I accomplish my course.”

“ The Anthrax record is a very important release to us,” drummer Charlie Benante told the Everblack podcast in March. “So we’re gonna, of course, make the time to fulfill doing as many shows as we possibly could in support of this record.”

Benante continued: “This record is not three or four songs deep of good songs and then the rest is shit. Every song on this record stands on its own. I mean, when one song finishes and the next one comes up, it’s just like, ‘Holy shit. This one’s f—ing just as good as the last.'”

Guitarist Scott Ian explained the 10-year gap between Anthrax albums during a March interview with the Rockpit. “We weren’t planning on 10 years. In actual time — ’cause if you take out the time we were on tour for For All Kings, ’cause that record came out in ’16, and we didn’t finish the touring cycle till November of ’19 on that album,” he said.

“We had already started writing at that point for a new record. And we thought we were just gonna take off for Christmas and New Year’s at ’19 going into ’20 and then get back together in ’20 and make a record. And then, of course, the world had other plans for everybody. So it wasn’t until some point later in ’21 that that started picking up again. Really, if you look at actual time we spent writing and recording the record, it was probably about three years, which, I think that’s pretty average these days, certainly for a band like ours.”
See how we’ve ranked every album from the “Big 4” of thrash below: