How did you pick the songs? Did you get to choose any in particular?
I made my suggestions (laughs). The Rush song in particular was – to me, to attempt to do a Rush song, you’d better do it well. You don’t want to do it half-assed, you want to really, really do a great job with it. The approach to that song was, let’s pay tribute to an artist that we loved growing up, and let’s really try to nail it, but also put a bit of us in as well. That’s how we approached it. I really stayed true to “Anthem,” the way Neil played the drum parts. I tried to follow him and his fills and timing as closely as I could. I really wanted to capture that vibe, and put myself as if I was playing on All the World’s a Stage. The same with the other songs too. We really wanted to stay true to what the bands originally created.
Yeah, and playing a Rush song, you know that all eyes are going to be on you.
We actually got some feedback from them, and it was awesome, because it was actually 100 positive! Someone sent it to them, and it was Alex Lifeson that wrote back, and said how much they enjoyed it, and that they’d already heard it. It was pretty awesome.
Anthrax has done covers more or less throughout your entire career. Are there any that really stand out to you?
The first one that really got a lot of notice was the first one we did back in ’86, which was “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.” At the time, no one was really doing covers like that, and so it was a bit of a surprise. “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” wasn’t a very popular Black Sabbath song, but we attempted it.
Also, there’s a different version of “Crawl” on the EP. Any particular reason to have that on there?
There was already a remix done, and we wanted to put it out. But we also wanted to put “Crawl” on the EP to tie it in to Worship Music. Let’s say a Rush or Journey fan gets wind of this EP because of those songs that are on it. They’ll also get to hear an original song by us and maybe get turned on to us.
