Anthrax Cranks Up the Heat at the Ryman

“I’ll be honest: They’re not supposed to let a band like us play here,” Jamey Jasta said Tuesday night with a certain amount of disbelief. Hatebreed, the metalcore band he’s fronted for 28 years, was on the most hallowed stage in country music at the Ryman. There was conflict in his tone: On one hand, Jasta seemed to have a genuine reverence for the hall that’s meant so much to American music. On the other hand, mosh calls are his most refined skill, and it seemed difficult to fathom that he’d find himself staring across an audience seated in church pews. “I can’t believe this is the first Hatebreed show ever without a circle pit.”

Moshing; slam dancing; creepy crawling; the wall of death. Whatever you call it, the aggressive ritual has been a part of hardcore punk and thrash metal since the styles’ infancy, for better or worse. It grew out of the early D.C. and Southern California scenes, was perfected in New York and spread worldwide, and each region and era has given its own spin kick to the tradition. But the Ryman is much more “Tennessee Waltz” than “Toxic Waltz.” Thus, it’s a pretty unlikely spot for Anthrax, who wrote and recorded “Caught in a Mosh,” to bring their COVID-delayed 40th anniversary celebration. When they finally hit the road, the venerable Queens, N.Y., thrashers brought Hatebreed and Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society along with them.

The walk from the parking garage to the sacred concert hall was like a journey into the cult of heavy metal. With each block, the pedestrians grew thicker with battle vests and black T-shirts. Usual suspects from Megadeth to Iron Maiden were represented, as well as Municipal Waste, who played The Basement East recently. And of course, there’s the metal tradition of wearing the shirt of the band you’re going to see; a faux pas in other subcultures, but an accepted metal custom. If I have learned anything from hard-rock aficionado and SiriusXM host Eddie Trunk, it’s that headbangers are some of the most deeply dedicated fanatics in all of music. Tuesday, a 30-foot-tall inflatable Ozzy Osbourne loomed over the steps at the entrance to The Mother Church, marking it as the epicenter of heaviness for the day.

Jasta, a former Headbanger’s Ball host, has been a prominent figure in the worlds of hardcore and metal since Hatebreed came into their own in the late ’90s. They played with other hardcore bands like Earth Crisis and Madball, who love basketball enough to have jerseys at their merch tables — aka “basketball jersey hardcore,” natch. Hatebreed’s first album, 1997’s Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire, took the touring juggernaut from VFW halls to Ozzfest stages, exposing them to fans of more mainstream metal. Hatebreed is the quintessential mosh band, alternating between two basic patterns in most songs. For one flavor, lightning-tempo thrash downshifts into floorpunch-inducing breakdowns; for the other, the pattern flips, with fast parts emerging in the middle of a mid-tempo slammer, all while Jasta shouts for two-and-a-half minutes. There’s not a lot of nuance here, but to the band’s credit, they pull it off. All the same, it’s a little hard to sell a song called “Destroy Everything” while flanked by stained glass inside a historic landmark. The staple hardcore show singalongs also don’t land as hard when a significant portion of the audience is 40-year-old men mouthing the lyrics from the balcony of an old church.

Black Label Society
Photo: Claire Steele

Going into the show, I wasn’t familiar with Zakk Wylde and his longtime band Black Label Society, but I knew Wylde & Co. had die-hard fans — no doubt in part from Wylde’s high-profile work with Ozzy Osbourne and Guns N’ Roses. In concert with BLS, his voice reminded me of late Alice in Chains frontman Layne Staley, and the songs were in the vein of standard hard rock, peppered with the occasional beefy “yee-ah!” It didn’t do much for me, but the crowd responded strongly. Their biggest reaction was for “In This River,” a ballad Wylde wrote for his late friend and Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott. Dime was shot and killed onstage during a show with his band Damageplan in 2004, and his brother Vinnie Paul Abbott, Pantera and Damageplan’s drummer, died in 2018. Wylde and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante will be filling in for the Abbotts on upcoming Pantera reunion shows that have caused some controversy among fans. Aside from questions about whether the Abbotts would have approved of a reunion, the shows will include singer Phil Anselmo, who was called out for white supremacist sympathies after he shouted “white power” and made a Nazi salute at a show in 2016. Nonetheless, “In This River,” accompanied by projected images of Dime, was poignant.

Much like their riff heroes in Motörhead, the Ramones and AC/DC, Anthrax established some pretty strict musical parameters early on and has consistently worked within them. In their four-decade run, the New Yorkers have always kept it fast and fun, never shying away from a good time. So why slow down just because you get old? Their set opened with a video intro featuring interviews about Anthrax with Keanu Reeves, Lady Gaga, Gene Simmons and Henry Rollins, the last of whom bought a house in Nashville and has been spotted around town recently. As the video ended, the backlit silhouettes of the band appeared. Perhaps Jasta forgot to pass along the “no moshing” memo in the green room: I spied the shadowy figure of guitarist Scott Ian with one finger tracing a circle in the air, the international signal to fire up the pit.

The curtain rose and Anthrax ignited into full-blitz mode with “Among the Living,” the titular ripper from their 1987 album. Singer Joey Belladonna challenged the crowd to find a way to start a pit, and followed up with “Caught in a Mosh.” Save for a few raised fists, there wasn’t much of a result. It’s tough to engage in good-natured battle with your neighbor at the Ryman without leaving a mark on something historic and probably irreplaceable.

Even with the setting keeping something of a lid on the energy, the pot boiled as the thrash legends blasted on through the 12-song set they’ve worked up for this tour. During the half-speed breakdown of their Judge Dredd homage “I Am the Law,” Ian proved that he can still skank across stage while fluidly strumming out his aggression. Belladonna noted his enthusiasm for the impending Pantera reunion, gesturing to Benante and saying, “We’ve got 25 percent of Pantera right here!” Though the show might have felt a bit more at home in a space where moshing and crowd surfing felt more appropriate — like maybe long-gone Nashville club Sal’s, where it’s likely the band played their first show in Music City — it’s still exhilarating to see what Anthrax can do. Four decades into their career, they bring the enthusiasm of a band who’s sleeping in the van as they trek across the country behind their first 7-inch.