Anthrax have had quite an action-packed couple of days, what with playing two sold-out shows at the tiny Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn (review coming soon), in between playing in front of considerably more people at Philly’s Rock Allegianc and Connecticut’s Revolution Rock Festival. In between that, they also visited SiriusXM, but instead of visiting Liquid Metal, they decided to hang out with another metalhead – comedian Jim Norton, who’s half of the Opie with Jim Norton show. The band even played live in the performance spot at the New York studio dubbed “the fishbowl,” since everyone can look in at it. While we’ve gotten to see Testament perform there fully electric, the band decided to strip things down and do a pair of songs acoustically. “Breathing Lightning,” one of For All Kings‘ standout tracks, sounds good stripped down, but they also debuted a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”
Both hearing the band play stripped down and hearing Joey Belladonna trying as best he can to restrain his powerful voice are fascinating to watch. He croons a bit more than Roger Waters, but he hits all the marks, and Jonathan Donais does a great job of shredding on an acoustic. They sound a lot more comfortable playing “Breathing Lightning,” as they’ve been playing it for months now, but the Floyd cover shows the band stretching, and it’s pretty great to watch. It went well enough for them to debut their cover live at Saint Vitus on the 16th. Check out both below.
