Watch Anthrax Play “Now It’s Dark” Live for the First Time in 27 Years

Somewhere in the world, there is a fan whose favorite Anthrax song is “Now It’s Dark,” from 1988’s State of Euphoria. And today, that fan is very, very happy — ’cause the band appears to have added it to their setlist for the first time in decades.

Blabbermouth reports that the band performed the song “for the first time in more than 27 years on June 8 at Batschkapp in Frankfurt, Germany” and “again the following night at the Rock Hard Festival in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.” You can check out pro-shot footage below.

The song sounds pretty killer, which is impressive given that Scott Ian tells Rock Hard that the band never even rehearsed beforehand:

“I’ll be honest — I was nervous. We didn’t rehearse it. We played it one time at soundcheck, and it felt really good at soundcheck. Everybody learned it at home before we came out. I think everyone was just very excited to bring that song back. And then during the show, it was my favorite song of the night. So, yeah, I was very, very happy with it. It was cool. It felt like a new song. Like, ‘Wow! We have this new song to play now.’ So who knows? Maybe that opens the door for other old songs that we didn’t think we would maybe bring back. Although we’ve been talking about some other songs off of ‘Persistence [of Time]’ — certainly maybe next year, because it’ll be the 30th anniversary of that album. I don’t think we’ll play the whole album or anything like that, but there’s other songs we haven’t played in a long time that would be cool to bring back. But yeah, ‘Now It’s Dark’ was great.”

I’m all in favor of Anthrax bringing back some old deep cuts. Maybe we could even talk about having Belladonna sing some Bush-era shit? Er, then again, maybe not.

https://youtu.be/WeiiDCrKeP8?t=2365