John Bush On His Time In Anthrax, New Armored Saint Music, & More

In a “dad to dad” moment, John Bush was in Detroit before Thanksgiving, watching his son play in a hockey tournament. If you know anything about me, I can’t NOT go watch a hockey game if I have the chance. That’s what I did, and while we were hanging out, we talked about John’s upcoming gigs, where he will pay tribute to his time in Anthrax. He was in the band from 1992 to 2005, then again in 2009/10.

John’s no stranger to coming through the Motor City. He told me he’d been here a couple of times in recent months. ” I just want to say, and I’m not just brown-nosing here, I’ve been to Detroit twice in the last couple months, just sort of hanging out. And Detroit, every city in America can learn from Detroit. The renaissance and the remaking of that city has been just nothing short of miraculous. And it’s really amazing. And every time I’m there, I just get this incredible feeling from it. And I just wish every city could look at that model and say, hey, man, we’re going to take some pages out of their book because they’re doing an incredible job.”

John’s is playing three very special gigs to highlight his era with Anthrax. Why is he doing this? “It’s something I need to do, kind of like we’re talking about, you know, sports and taking that next step and, you know, overcoming any kind of apprehensions you made. It’s something I needed to do. I’ve been talking about it for a long time. And, you know, I want to do it. I love those records. And quite frankly, those guys just don’t play any material from it. And I understand why. The Belladonna era has a lot of songs. Plus, they’ve made two records since he’s been back in the band. And they just finished a third that’s coming out soon. So I understand it.” He went on to say that he doesn’t want these great albums to fall by the wayside. ” But I just didn’t want those records to just be eliminated from people’s minds. And a lot of people connected with them, especially in the 90s. So, it was a part of my life for, like, almost 13 years. So I did a lot of work with them. And I think there’s some amazing material.”

Joining a new band at that time, as the musical landscape changed dramatically and quickly, was tricky. “I mean, I was like, we weren’t looking around at bands going, okay, what are they doing? Uh, let’s, let’s do that by any means. We were not doing that. We were just saying, you know, we’re ready to kind of take on a new sound, a little bit
too. We’ve got a new singer, and let’s, let’s make a sound like we’re taking a step forward in this, in this, the sound and the scene. And, we did that. And, it was a Sound of White Noise was a record that really kind of embraced
that whole new change.”

The shows aren’t local to Detroit if you’re looking for a cool road trip. He’ll be backed up by his Category 7 band, which will feature his Armored Saint bass player, Joey Vera.

Dec. 13 – Los Angeles, Calif. @ Whisky a Go Go
Dec. 18 – St. Charles, Ill. @ Arcada Theatre
Dec. 20 – New York, N.Y. @ Racket

While John couldn’t talk much about the new album from his band, Armored Saint, he did give up a few details. “It is done. It’s mastered and completed. I don’t know what our protocol is regarding putting out this, you know, telling people what the title is and the song titles. I’m still kind of trying to figure out, can we do that, or what’s going on with that? But it’ll be soon enough.”

He did fill us in a little. “But, yeah, there’s like 11 tunes on it, which was something we were struggling with because sometimes Armored Sand has a tendency to write songs a little too long. And then our label was saying, like, come on, man, shorter tunes, shorter tunes. And we’re like, okay, okay, we’re going to focus on shorter songs and just come in with a slug in the face and make it brief. Which we did, actually. So, because we want to, at Metal Blade, our label is always great about putting out vinyl on every album. And they just do a great job with the packaging.
And so we wanted, you know, at one point, Joey was saying, well, we might only have a certain amount of songs because of vinyl. I was like, no way.” He went on….even though he said he probably shouldn’t, HaHa. “We haven’t put out a record in six years. Like, we cannot put out nine songs. Our fans will kill us if we do that. Like, we need to have all the songs that we wrote that we finished. And we ended up doing that. So it’s going to be at least 11 tunes. And the artwork’s great. And I think, I mean, we were supposed to have a date of April 8th or 9th. But I don’t know if that’s still in play. So I’m probably still saying way more than I’m supposed to. And I want to talk about it.”

There was a famous, or maybe infamous, tour they did with Metallica and W.A.S.P. in 1985. John recalled some of his favorite stories from that tour. “We developed a really great friendship with the Metallica guys at that point. We were both on the same management, Q Prime, at that point. And we have stories when, like James threw Joey’s leather jacket out the window from a Colorado, like a Denver hotel, like 30 stories. He’s going, that’s a cool jacket.
Joey had this cool, like red lapel, leather, you know, studded jacket. And he (James Hetfield) goes, Let me see it. And he got it, and he threw it out the window. And then we just saw Joey’s jacket floating down in the snow. And then James pulled the firearm. So, like all the people had to, it was like probably late, two in the morning. And everybody had to leave in their pajamas go out in the cold. And they didn’t get caught for it.”

Always great catching up with one of the best voices in metal. Watch the entire interview above.