WHAT THE CRAP?! IS COREY TAYLOR THE NEW SINGER FOR ANTHRAX?!
Blabbermouth reports that Slipknot/Stone Sour singer Corey Taylor has been working on new material with Anthrax. When asked if he was the band’s new singer, Taylor neither confirmed nor denied that he had taken the position, stating “It’s been banded about. I’m not saying anything right now because all it’s been is just talked about… I know that we worked on about eight or nine songs together that I’ve written lyrics for, and there was a song that I had actually written for them… But there’s nothing definite right now. It’s one of those things where it’s like we’re just gonna kind of play it by ear and just see what happens. So there’s nothing definite. It’s something that we’re talking about — it’s something that we kind of wanna do. But I’m in two huge bands right now. So it’s like I barely get enough time to sleep, let alone do another band.”
Needless to say, this is going to start a war of words between metal fans everywhere. Allow us to get the ball rolling…
Taylor isn’t the greatest singer in the world – live, especially, he seems to get easily winded and consequently just blends lyrics together, Vince Neil-style – but he isn’t an awful singer, either, and he’s a pretty awesome frontman who knows how to get a crowd pumped. And the purists can say what they want, but Slipknot were largely responsible for launching the American New Wave and bringing real metal back into the spotlight. What the last band to be on the cover of Rolling Stone while promoting an album as heavy as Iowa? What was the last band to go multi-platinum playing music that intense, with virtually no radio or MTV support? What’s more, Taylor clearly has the chops to play a diverse array of metallic styles – Stone Sour’s first album kinda sounded like Slipknot-lite, but their more recent work really sounds nothing like the ‘Knot (and Scott Ian, by the way, thinks that Stone Sour are the shit). Finally, Taylor joining the group will throw a lot of attention the band’s way, and pretty much guarantees that if they can write something as good (or even half as good) as We’ve Come for You All again, it won’t get ignored this time*. In other words: Anthrax could do a lot worse than Taylor.
On the other hand, there are a LOT of purists out there who will never give Taylor a chance just because he’s spent most of his career running around in a silly costume (although that never seems to bother Kiss fans). And a lot of these purists tend to be older fans – like the ones that will largely populate your average Anthrax concert (of course, ‘Thrax might be hoping Taylor can bring in some younger fans).
Furthermore, as Taylor himself says, it’s hard to imagine WHEN he would find time to front a third band – Stone Sour are still on tour right now, and Slipknot are scheduled to head back into the studio at the end of this year. Taylor’s schedule is action packed, and even if he can find some time to record with Anthrax, I can’t imagine when he would ever be able to do a tour – unless he wants to pull double duty, Zakk Wylde at Ozzfest style… but I imagine it’s much harder for a singer/screamer to pull off that trick than a guitar player, at least without doing serious damage to his pipes.
Right now, of course, this is all still very tentative, and we may never find out what an Taylor-led Anthrax would sound like. But, just for fun, here’s a video of Taylor joining the band on-stage during the John Bush era for a rendition of “Bring the Noise.”
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/lLy2nZUI5C8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Now let the metal community in-fighting begin!
-AR
*It’s the same situation Velvet Revolver found themselves in: hiring Sebastian Bach might have seemed at the outset like a cool choice at the outset, but it was never gonna get them the attention that Weiland brings to the band, because Bach had already become a punchline in too many circles. Put more simply: with Baz at the helm, VR would’ve essentially been Slash’s Snakepit Version 3.0.
