Joey Belladonna of Anthrax talks about Married...With Children and rejoining the band

Tom Murphy October 18, 2010 7:34AM

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Considered one of the "big four" of the thrash metal era, Anthrax (see our preview here) put New York on the map with its inventive take on infusing metal with a punk rock spirit. When singer Joey Belladonna joined in time to record 1985's Spreading the Disease, that band had its classic, and arguably most fruitful, line-up.

Over the course of the next seven years, Anthrax pioneered a true fusion of rap and metal as well as expanded the idea of what metal could be by injecting a healthy dose of silly, and sometimes biting, humor along with warping the sometimes rigid lines of heavy metal's aesthetics.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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