Joey Belladonna:  Hey, I am very excited! It is just so metal!  That is the thing for me, if anything is new for me it is all raw, old, crack, crack as in hard stuff, rock, old shit.  It is good, nothing twisted about it.  You have some vocals going down.  I love hearing Rob sing, and it is nice to be out with him on such a big tour.

Alexi: It is great for both Anthrax and Priest to both be having their reunions at the same time.  It is almost like a blast into the past!

Joey: Right, I know!

Alexi: What did you think about Gigantour and going out with Megadeth!

Joey: Well that was great!  We only got five shows so we didn’t really have a chance to get a flow going.  I thought it was a nice.  I think we even fit the bill better!  We had gotten offered for that but the timing was a bit off for us.  We couldn’t do it, but Dave wanted us to.  Maybe we can do it again.  We work well together!

It is a great thing to see going on, especially when we had the Clash of The Titans over ten years ago.  It is great for the fans to see two historically important bands go out on the road together.

Alexi: Totally!  I am all for that!  A good solid package works well for a great tour! What are you excited for not only in terms of what is going on in the Anthrax camp but with the Priest tour?

Joey: There are so many things going on here.  There is so much anticipation that you need to take it day by day.  Just, every day is a day of reckoning and you need to do what you need to be prepared, sing well, and have fun.  I go day to day.

Alexi: Is there anything going on after the Priest tour?

Joey: We will be off for a couple of months and pick up in January.  We are taking this tour first and doing it a bit at a time.  It takes a lot to get these things ready and together so every little bit needs to lineup right whether it is a packaged tour or not.  We are going to keep working and we have a lot of things we could do, it is just a matter of planning.  The Priest thing was not in the cards and boom we were there.  That was a nice thing.  It was like the old days you have the Ozzy or Maiden tours or the Metallica tours, but all that stuff happened!

Alexi: Do you get the same feeling that you had when you first went out with them on the old tours?

Joey: Yeah, it is even better right now.  Everyone has been through so much and it has been such a long time since we did it.  I feel a lot better about everything in terms of the songs and the singing.  I feel a lot better about it all.  The thing is that the band went through another system with someone else after I left.  It runs through my mind a bit, but I am not affected by it.  It was there though so it runs through my mind here and there.  It is a little bit weird, but it is all-good now.  It was what it was, but for me it is a different system.  The music is different, and as a band, the guys are a bit different, the stage is different and has a bit of a different look to it.  The whole presence of each guy brings a new flavor and we do the old shit the way it was.

Alexi: How do you feel about the change over time with the band?

Joey: I know what we did was cool; I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.  The band just wanted a change and wanted do something more diverse vocally.  That is all I can think of.  If its okay now it was before with me.  It still sits good.  If we were to write something together, I am sure it would sound interesting.  That is the only thing that is strange sometimes was the other system that was there.  But then again we all did some solo stuff.  It’s all good, I am really happy to be here and I knew there would be a time when we would bounce into a position to do this.

Alexi: What is going on with your solo material?

Joey: If I wasn’t doing the Anthrax thing, I would probably continue on with my solo stuff.  I wanna play and I love doing something.  I probably would have continued on with the Belladonna name stuff then just joining a band.  I really have nothing planned for solo stuff because I have little time as is.  I can’t be one of those people who has 100 different things going on and wants to seize the moment.  I don’t want to do that.  This is plenty enough for me and I love this enough to put all my effort into it and not think about anything else.  I have some other demos, Artifacts II that I would like to put out sometime.  I worked with Paul Cook and its all really good stuff.  I have plenty of songs that I jammed on with other people from the area and throughout the years. 

Now because of the internet, I can just hop into a studio quickly and pop something out.  It is really cool!  I don’t have to go into a huge studio or get signed onto a huge label to get my material out.  I don’t care if I sell 5,000 or 500 records, I just want people to hear some cool songs or something new and different.

Alexi: What do you think about the Anthrax Anthology that is out?

Joey: It is great that we remastered it.  It would have been cool to re-record it or remix it, but it is very expensive to do things like that.  At least remastering it gives it a different sound.  Stuff is mixed better in these times, so we gave it a better shot and gave it more in the mastering form.  If they haven’t heard it, they are hearing it better now!

Alexi: What do you think about Anthrax’s legacy in the heavy metal world?

Joey: Well, hey!  If you are put into a group like that, you certainly feel as though you have accomplished something and you are being recognized.  Even when I just ran into Rob Halford in the hallway, he called me over even though I had never met him.  He gave me a big hug and I didn’t know him, yet he knew of me and I knew of him.  It is a nice thing when people consider and respect your work.  Recognition is nice.  When you do something well and people really dig it, it is a nice feeling!  You obviously can’t please everyone.  When I joined Anthrax I didn’t know what to think of it, but it is the coolest shit!  It is so different, we have a way of doing something that is different from what other people do.  That is the great thing about being in a band, when you are original enough to be on your own and accomplish something unique.

Alexi: What sets yourself apart from your contemporaries in the eighties?

Joey: I think there is some humor there, there is a bit of extra fun going on there, and I am not putting those in the forefront, but that is some of the things I think of.  The way that the writing was unique, there was some good speed with vocals over it.  We had some interesting tunes that were twistier than others.  We had a big array of musicians that did their part to do something different.  It just happened.  The chemistry you get from these guys was something totally unique.

Alexi: What do you think was the one thing that Anthrax did that will live on with the name in the heavy metal chronicles?

Joey: That is hard question.  It is hard to say one thing that we did.  I don’t know if I want to say there was one thing that we did, there were just so many.  We have done a lot of little things.  We did the rap thing, and just so many little things.  It is an opinion sometimes.

Alexi: With the rap thing, did you ever think that you and Public Enemy would be bringing together two scenes that were so different, yet in some ways so similar?