Midlife Metal Crisis - Top Ten Heavy Metal Albums of the 1980's #5 Anthrax - Among the Living

Midlife Metal Crisis - Top Ten Heavy Metal Albums of the 1980's #5 Anthrax - Among the Living (1987)

Anthrax released their third album in 1987, catipulting them into the big four of Thrash of the 1980's (the other four being  Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth). They had already had an underground hit album with their previous effort - Spreading the disease and expectations were high for this by the New York outfit. We were not disapointed. It was preceded by the single I am the law, an ode to Judge Dredd from 2000AD, music didn't get any better than this and to top it off you could get 7" picture discs like this:

The sound on this is clean and straight up avoiding all the eighties production clichés, probably why it has aged so well. The singles (I am the Law and Indians) sound great and the opening title track still sounds epic. Caught in the Mosh captures the intensity of what it was like in those mosh pits when those thrash bands were playing. What Anthrax had that the other bands of the time didn't was a sense of melody. They could swing sharply from a hardcore shouty scream to quite a melodic chorus and back again and still sound sincere in their delivery. A real hard trick to pull off.

They would be accused of selling out the metal fraternity with how they looked, dressed and championed hip hop acts, they wore Bermuda shorts, def jam t-shirts and baseball caps no studs or bullet belts. They would invent Rap-rock on the throw away in-joke  B side of I'm the Man (later released on its own merit) and go on to set the standard with their collaboration with Public enemy on Bring the Noise. Leading the young and impressionable away from the metal road and into new areas of music.

Anthrax and Public Enemy