ANTHRAX – CURSUM PERFICIO album review by Mark J. "It's Anthrax working a sound they've owned for over a decade and tightening every bolt"

-Nuclear Blast / Megaforce · Out September 18-

Ten years is a long time to leave a thrash band's discography untended — a full stretch of pandemic disruption and touring commitments sits between this and For All Kings, and it's the longest gap of Anthrax's career. Cursum Perficio ends that wait on the band's own terms, and it's a record with far more going on than "the old guard shows up again."

Start with the title. It's Latin for "my journey has come to an end," lifted from a plaque in Marilyn Monroe's house, and it's a needlessly cruel tease for a decade of fans who briefly read it as a farewell announcement. It isn't one. If anything it reads as a line drawn under everything that delayed the record, not the band. Recorded at Dave Grohl's Studio 606 with Jay Ruston back at the desk — the same pairing behind For All Kings and Worship Music — this isn't a stylistic reinvention. It's Anthrax working a sound they've owned for over a decade and tightening every bolt.

The sequencing does something smart: "Persistence of Memory" opens as a moody, wordless crawl before bleeding into "The Long Goodbye," a mid-paced opener written about losing someone to dementia, carrying one of Jonathan Donais's best solos on the record before the album's even properly started. From there the singles do the heavy lifting — "It's for the Kids" is Belladonna at his angriest, aimed squarely at political inaction, while "Everybody's Got a Plan" turns a Mike Tyson line into a genuine hard-rock gut-punch. Both are lean, in-and-out, no fat.

The real shock is the epic "The Edge of Perfection." Scott Ian apparently called it the best Anthrax song ever written, which is a big claim to make before release — but it's the most genuinely surprising thing the band has done in decades, folding blast-beat black metal textures into a chorus that's unexpectedly melancholic. Whether or not it's their best song, it's proof this lineup still has ideas left to chase rather than just laps to run. "Infectious" swings the other way entirely, leaning into a mid-90s alt-metal groove that sounds built for the John Bush era, complete with a Stephen King nod buried in the lyric. "NYC 93" and the super punchy "Target on My Back" both carry Dimebag-era Pantera in their DNA — the latter giving Frank Bello a proper "Caught in a Mosh"-style bass showcase — and "Watch It Go" stacks Danzig-style pinch harmonics on top of another groove-heavy riff.

The cost of all this range is the handful of tracks that push past five minutes, the title cut included(the weakest track on the album), in that stubborn '80s-thrash habit of treating runtime as a badge of seriousness rather than a tool. It's a minor complaint against a record that closes as strong as it opens — "My Victory" crams in tight riffing, a real melody, and a bonus mosh breakdown that lands like a stinger after the credits. 

Set against the rest of the Big Four, the comparison isn't about who's been quiet longest — it's about who's still got something to prove. Megadeth just closed the book entirely with a self-titled farewell album earlier this year. Metallica's last outing, 72 Seasons, split its own fanbase on release. Anthrax, coming back after the longest gap of anyone in that circle, sounds hungrier than either of them managed on their way out or through. That's not nothing for a band this far into its fourth decade.

Cursum Perficio is out everywhere September 18 via Nuclear Blast/Megaforce.

https://anthrax.bfan.link/cplp

And it is a killer release; this band ain't slowing down or taking the easy option among the living.

https://www.anthrax.com/