Anthrax worked with director Jack Bennett on the below clip for their current single, “Monster At The End“. Bennett previously helmed the band’s ultra-violent “Blood Eagle Wings” video, with actor Justin Michael Terry returning in this clip—albeit not as ‘The Skull King’. The video premiered via Fangoria, who are also running an interview with drummer Charlie Benante. In that Q&A he lamented the state of the music industry, stating:
“I don’t think there is that real urgency to do a video in the way it once was. I mean, when you were doing a record, you were already picking like two or three songs that were going to be your videos. The video was basically gonna be this huge marketing tool that would shoot your record sales from ten copies to ten thousand copies. It’s not like that anymore, because the whole world has changed.
The business model has changed completely. Basically, the floor has dropped out. There really is no other way of marketing your record like the old school way. Now you have to think of other ways to reach people. The problem with YouTube is it’s based on, you know…how do I put this…basically stealing. Basically, YouTube is taking things that already existed and not paying for it, yet profiting from it.”
He later continued:
“I remember the days of early rap and they could throw as many samples of as many songs as they wanted to and no one stopped it until someone said, “What a minute. I’m not getting paid for the song that I created and you built a song around.” They stopped it. Now, the same thing that happened with that needs to happen with this. It needs to be policed and it needs to be stopped.”
When it was brought up that bands can seemingly only make money by touring these days, he commented:
“…In the past we’d have time to kind of explore the city or country that we were in. Nowadays, I don’t really get the luxury to do that because I have to be at the venue to do a meet-and-greet and to do signings and to do this…to do that. It costs money to tour. You have to pay for a bus and so many other things that factor into it. At the end of a tour, you look at the spreadsheet, you see the columns and you’re like, Jesus Christ! What the fuck? It’s a hard business to be in. In the past it was hard, but now this business has almost stopped.”
Anthrax will be out this fall with Slayer and Death Angel, you can find their schedule here.
