CLASH OF THE TITANS TOUR, PART DEUX

The American Carnage tour - featuring Slayer and Megadeth - just got a bit better: Anthrax signed on! The three bands toured together back in 1991 as Clash Of The Titans, and an up-and-coming band called Alice In Chains opened. Read the details of the tour here.

Of course, the ultimate would have been a U.S. leg of the Big Four tour that's hit Europe this summer: that tour features all three bands, plus Metallica.

Back to Anthrax: I was hoping that John Bush would be rejoining the band, as they did a brief Australian tour with him a few months back. But it turns out that the guy he replaced, Joey Belladonna is back as the band's singer. I know the band recorded an album with Dan Nelson, but fired him and ditched the vocals.  I wonder if Belladonna will just re-do those and that will be the next Anthrax album.

THE BIG FOUR: IT'S ON??? METALLICA, SLAYER, MEGADETH, ANTHRAX

A press release I got tonight announced that, in fact, "The Big Four" - Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax - will be performing at a concert together. So far, only at some dates on the European traveling festival Sonisphere. So, if you're going to be in Poland or the Czech Republic, you're in luck! I doubt this tour will hit the U.S. I wonder who will be Anthrax's singer?  On theirwebsite, the band lineup doesn't include anyone. Well, if this doesn't get John Bush to rejoin the band, I don't know what will.

IS JOHN BUSH REJOINING ANTHRAX?

Over the summer, Anthrax announced that they were ditching their new singer, Dan Nelson, who they found on myspace. They recorded a full album with him, but the plan was to get a new singer and re-record the vocals. They cancelled most of their tour dates, except for one festival, which featured their former lead singer, John Bush. Now they've announced that they are doing a brief Australian tour with Bush on vocals, and Scott Ian said in an interview that he'd like Bush to rejoin the band for good.

Although the best Anthrax albums featured singer Joey Belladonna, I always thought that those albums would have been better with John Bush, and the first album with John Bush, Sound Of White Noise, holds up to anything the band has ever done. Bush rejoining the band is the best thing that could happen to them, so here's hoping that it happens.

But if you do prefer Joey Belladonnna, you should check out the recently released expanded editioin of the band's classic 1987 album Among The Living, which features bonus tracks and a concert DVD from the era (the N.F.V. video, recorded in London). And also Caught In A Mosh: BBC Live In Concert, which features two more performances, also from 1987. That's a lot of live 1987 Anthrax, but there you have it!

In other news, Rock Sound reports that Scott Ian and Anthrax guitarist Rob Caggiano have a new band called The Damned Things, which also features Keith Buckley of the band Every Time I Die and... Fall Out Boy members Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley (aka not the famous guy and not the singer). Scott probably knows how lame this looks, so he probably was won over by the Fall Out Boy guys enough to withstand the ridicule he knows he is in for.