Anthrax will be on an upcoming North American run touring with Volbeat and Crobot, and will be doing a “fan favorites” set including “Anti-Social”, “Madhouse,” “Caught In A Mosh,” “I Am The Law” and “Indians,” as well as one brand new song “Soror Irrumator (Lords of The Rock),” off of the HBO’s Game of Thrones’ Catch The Throne Mixtape, Vol II. The band will be release their new album later in 2015 and featuring the recording debut of guitarist Jon Donais (Shadows Fall).
Apr 24: 1stBank Center – Denver, CO (with Volbeat) Apr 25: Rushmore Plaza Civic Center – Rapid City, SD (with Volbeat) Apr 27: Spokane Arena – Spokane, WA (with Volbeat) Apr 28: Adams Center – Missoula, MT (with Volbeat) Apr 29: WaMu Theatre – Seattle, WA (with Volbeat) May 01: Revolution Place – Grande Prairie, AB (with Volbeat) May 02: Rexall Place – Edmonton, AB (with Volbeat) May 03: Calgary Stampede Corral – Calgary, AB (with Volbeat) May 04: SaskTel Centre – Saskatoon, SK (with Volbeat) May 06: Brandt Centre – Regina, SK (with Volbeat) May 07: Ralph Englestad Arena – Grand Forks, ND (with Volbeat) May 09: Somerset Amphitheatre – Somerset, WI (Northern Invasion Festival) May 10: Alliant Energy Ctr. Memorial – Madison, WI (WJJO MayDay MayLay) May 12: General Motors Centre – Oshawa, ON (with Volbeat) May 13: TD Place – Ottawa, ON (with Volbeat) May 14: Quebec Colisee Pepsi – Quebec City, QC (with Volbeat) May 15: CEPSUM Montreal – Montreal, QC (with Volbeat) May 17: Mapfre Stadium, Columbus, OH (Rock on the Range) May 18: Dow Events Center – Saginaw, MI (with Volbeat) May 19: Ford Center – Evansville, IN (with Volbeat) May 20: Aragon Ballroom – Chicago, IL (with Volbeat) May 22: Tyson IBF Events Center – Sioux City, IA (with Volbeat) May 23: Prior Creek Music – Pryor, OK (Rocklahoma) May 24: AT&T Center – San Antonio, TX (Rockfest) May 25: Wet & Wild Water World – El Paso, TX (Baloonfest) May 27: Verizon Grand Prairie – Dallas, TX (with Volbeat) May 28: Bayou Music Center – Houston, TX (with Volbeat) May 30: Liberty Me. Park – Kansas City, MO (Rockfest) May 31: Outdoors at Pop’s – St. Louis, MO (with Volbeat) Jun 02: Hammerstein Ballroom – New York, NY (with Volbeat)
Catch The Throne, Vol. II track listing: 01. Method Man – The Oath 02. MNDR – Run for Cover 03. Ty Dolla $ign – Never Back Down 04. Killswitch Engage – Loyalty 05. Kap G – Surrender Now 06. Melanie Fiona – Fight Through It 07. Snoop Dogg – Lannister’s Anthem 08. Yandel – Marcando Territorio 09. Anthrax – Soror Irrumator 10. Estelle – Let Me Go 11. Talib Kweli – Lord of the Light 12. Mastodon – White Walker 13. Raquel Sofia – Legends 14. Stalley – All Mine 15. Mushroomhead – Among the Crows
Mastodon has been confirmed by HBO as one of the many artists to take part on the Game Of Thrones Mixtape, Catch the Throne: The Mixtape Vol. 2. HBO offers the following details:
HBO has teamed up with some of the music industry’s top artists for the second installment of Catch the Throne: The Mixtape, for the Emmy® – and Golden Globe – winning series Game of Thrones. Building on the success of Volume 1 – with over 2.5MM streams to date – that attracted hip-hop and reggaeton fans alike, Volume 2 will feature Method Man, Snoop Dogg and Yandel, and will transcend genres by adding Grammy-nominated metal bands Mastodon, Anthrax and Killswitch Engage to the mixtape lineup. The mixtape will be released in anticipation of the season 5 debut of Game of Thrones airing April 12th on HBO.
Produced by Launch Point Records, the 15-song mixtape features diverse artists representing Game of Thrones families, leveraging themes and highlights from season 4. Showcasing the importance of music in Game of Thrones, each song on the mixtape samples music from the show’s season 4 soundtrack. This year’s mixtape also weaves in the overarching theme of fire and ice, providing listeners with an exciting line-up of heavy metal and hip-hop artists.
As huge fans of the series, artists were eager to participate. “Off the top, I love Game of Thrones – I even gave my expert analysis of this season on my GGN show. It’s like the rap game, it’s gangster, about family, loyalty and trying to get to the top,” stated Snoop Dogg. “I had to get involved. Give the fans a little bit of how I see it.”
Lucinda Martinez, SVP of Multicultural Marketing at HBO stated, “Catch the Throne: The Mixtape garnered much praise and piqued interest of artists wanting to partake in its sequel. We’re excited to seize the opportunity to channel the fandom of these artists into volume 2 and give audiences another opportunity to experience original music inspired by the show. We are particularly excited to integrate heavy metal into the mixtape this time around to continue our celebration of this groundbreaking series.” Scott Ian, founding member of Anthrax, stated “As fans of Game of Thrones, we are extremely excited to collaborate on this project. Recording a song about the Lannister family allows us to connect more with our fans and Game of Thrones fans in a way we would have never imagined.”
Catch the Throne: The Mixtape Vol. 2 will be released next month, free of charge. Listeners are encouraged to share using the hashtag #CatchTheThrone.
I’d like you to stop what you’re doing right now and pay attention.
For here is the most impressive and important heavy metal album thus far in 2015. This is the record that is going to inhabit the upper echelons of those end of year lists and we are only in the year’s early months. This is the record that you’re going to smile knowingly about and, when all the hipsters come out of the woodwork to declare their love for it, you’re going to feel smug in the knowledge that you were there when Frost (Osmose) came out and when Axioma Ethica Odini (Indie/Nuclear Blast) changed your world view of what was possible with progressive metal. In Times (Nuclear Blast), the thirteenth album from Norwegian progressives Enslaved, is a record of staggering, jaw-dropping brilliance.
In Times distils the essence of Enslaved in brilliant, grandiose fashion but, like all great albums, suggests new, as yet uncharted opportunities. To use sporting parlance, suggesting that the band are at the top of their game is to truly misunderstand what’s going on here. Enslaved are not just at the top of their game; they are in the process of trying to change the game being played. In Times delivers six extended, expansive aural essays as opposed to songs. They are all brilliant, all have their own internal narratives, nuances and highlights and yet, knitted together, manifest themselves as the most coherent and immersive album of this band’s career.
‘Thurisaz Dreaming’ kicks things off in spectacular yet familiar fashion. We are thrown back into the brutal and ferocious territory that is reminiscent of the black metal hinterland of the band’s early period. This works on a number of levels- as a visceral introduction and a statement of intent for the new record, it is all welcome and vibrant strum und drang. As a reminder of how far the band have come without compromising their aesthetic or values it is a glorious throwing down of the gauntlet. About three minutes in, we move elegantly into the more progressive melodic territory of the band’s more recent past. It’s akin to pulling a handbrake turn. In lesser hands, this juxtaposition of styles would be clunky and knowing. With Enslaved, such is their talent for aural narrative, this seems like the most natural thing in the world. It is a technicolour, vibrant and furious opening.
It then gets even better. ‘Building with Fire’ is one of the best and most compelling manifestations of the band’s melding of clean, open singing and harsher brutalism that I have ever heard. It has a hypnotic 4/4 beat that acts as a simple yet effective architecture for the dual vocal talents of Herbrand Larsen and Grutle Kjellson. It’s brilliantly effective, and catchy as hell.
And then it gets better still. On ‘1000 Years of Rain’ we have one of the most intricate, eloquent and astonishingly creative songs the band have created. It is a rich and richly nuanced epic, covering an extraordinary range of styles, stitched together like a medieval tapestry. This is what the soundtrack to Game of Thrones sounds like in my head. We are treated to folk, hymnal chanting, riffing bigger than tectonic plates and a brilliant attention to detail that brings the listener back time and again to discover new gems as well as simply wallow in the gloriousness of it all.
Exemplary is the most apposite word that I can conjure for the majesty of ‘Nauthir Bleeding’. It stretches to almost breaking point the band’s capacity for bringing together the dream-like melody with gnarly bombast but it’s a stretching that never breaks, largely because this is a band that knows exactly what they are doing and do it with aplomb; being taken to the edge has rarely felt as thrilling.
The simplicity of what Enslaved do – the light and shade, the ambient and terrifying is simple enough to explain, much harder to deliver. On the ten minutes plus dynamism of the title track you really understand just how accomplished they are. This is the most obviously progressive track here with long ethereal passages that reflect the album’s otherworldly nature whilst continuing to blend in the relentless riffage that they are equally renowned for.
The album coda, ‘Daylight’, is well, magnificent, driving through fantastic melodies and power to the inevitable conclusion that leaves you shaking your head at how good it all is.
In Times is a reflection and a look forward; it is the most complete encapsulation of what Enslaved are about and what Enslaved are capable of. Again and again, In Times shifts your expectations about what “good” looks and sounds like. This is the most daring, ambitious, otherworldly and evocative album of an already deeply impressive career. It is the record where any scintilla of doubt of their genius can be banished from your mind, consigned to the dustbin and given a right royal telling off. With In Times, Enslaved have created an album where every ounce of their creative nous has been distilled into an album that is simply and utterly spellbinding.
Anthrax is joining Killswitch Engage on the next installment of the Catch The Throne compilation via HBO for the next season of Game Of Thrones. They were recently in the studio to record a new song, which is now reportedly for the compilation. Anthrax has posted recently “#CatchTheThrone” from their studio sessions, hinting their possible participation.
