ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian has issued a new blog offering up the band’s Download Festival history along with a recap of their appearance at the event this year on the weekend of June 8th – 10th in Leicestershire, England at Donington Park. An excerpt is available below:

“I’m drinking coffee in my room listening to Howard Stern and packing my bags for my flight home Sunday. We’ve got two shows left, CopenHell today and Metal Town in Gothenburg tomorrow. Lots of great bands playing these two; SLAYER, MASTODON, LAMB OF GOD, BRUTAL TRUTH and many more. It’s been a great two week run over here. The shows have been some of the best of our career, specifically Download.

 
I’m going to back up and give you a little Donington Anthrax/Download/Monsters Of Rock history.

The first time we played at Donington was in 1987 when the festival was still called Monsters Of Rock. The bill was CINDERELLA, W.A.S.P., Anthrax, METALLICA, DIO, BON JOVI. For us to be playing at Donington was something we never thought we would do. It was legendary, something we would read about in Kerrang! and Metal Forces. We had never played anything even close to the size of Donington at that point in our career. I remember thinking how do I even prepare for a show like that? It was just too big to wrap my brain around it.

The day of the show we woke up in our hotel in Nottingham and it was raining. We already knew that this was the norm, some of our crew had warned us about the great UK summer weather. Well the rain didn’t dampen (yeah I know, but I’m too tired right now to choose another verb) our excitement as we headed over to the site. It pretty much pissed down rain on Cinderella and W.A.S.P.. About ten minutes after W.A.S.P. finished the rain stopped and the clouds started to thin out. Was it actually going to clear up for our set? We hit the stage about 20 minutes later and the sun had broken through. The already insane levels of excitement we were feeling were uncontrollable by that point and when that massive crowd of 80,000 responded to everything we did, feeding us a massive amount of energy, we took it and channeled it into what was at that point the best show we ever played. Our set was over before I knew it, time flying whilst having fun and all that. The rain held out for Metallica’s set as well and started up again as soon as they were finished. Afterwards one of the magazines that reviewed the show said that ‘Mother Nature loves thrash metal.'”

Go to this location for the complete blog.

As previously reported, Anthrax will hit the road in North America with TESTAMENT and DEATH ANGEL this fall. Dates are as follows:

September
14 – Sacramento, CA – Ace Of Spades
15 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theatre
16 – Kennewick, WA – Toyota Center
17 – Spokane, WA – Knitting Factory
20 – Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
21 – Calgary, AB – MacEwan Hall
22 – Edmonton, AB – Edmonton Event Centre
24 – Saskatoon, SK – Odeon Event Center
25 – Winnipeg, MB – Burton Cummings Theatre
29 – Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall
30 – Quebec City, QC – Capitole du Quebec

October
2 – Montreal, QC – Metropolis
3 – Portland, ME – State Theater
5 – Montclair, NJ – Wellmont Theatre
Source: Bravewords.com