Always the purveyors of pummeling metal mayhem, Anthrax continues to shred musical boundaries more than 30 years into its career. After last year’s release of Worship Music, the band’s first album with front man Joey Belladonna since 1990’s Persistence of Time and first original album since 2003’s We’ve Come for You All, Anthrax has been on the road almost nonstop including its recent stint on the summer Mayhem Festival. As one of the originators of thrash metal in the ’80s, Anthrax has continued to be on the edge of musical breakthroughs, collaborating with Public Enemy to help usher in rap rock. Last month, Martians were introduced to Anthrax when the band’s “Got the Time” became the first heavy metal song to ever be played on Mars, thanks to NASA rover Curiosity. Back here on terra firma, the band prepares for another first as it makes its Canadian debut when the third leg of the Anthrax/Testament co-headlining tour begins on the West Coast before heading north for the autumn. With all these firsts, the timing couldn’t be better for Anthrax to make its Wrestling with Pop Culture debut. And here it is, a conversation with Belladona.

This year’s Mayhem Festival has been called one of the most successful in the tour’s history. That success has to be attributed, at least somewhat, to a solid lineup including veterans such as Motörhead, Slipknot, Slayer and Anthrax. How do you feel about Anthrax’s contribution to this year’s Mayhem Fest?

Joey Belladonna (back right) and Anthrax are still as innovative as ever (photo by Matthew Rodgers)

Any tour that’s got a great package, good people that are working together every day – we woke up every day and were always busy doing chores to get that thing going all day – and great music, it’s going to be successful. We’re just here to play good music and we’re happy that everybody likes that. Whether it was successful or not, we’re still going to be able to bring a good day of music by our standards.

Anthrax has quite an extensive history with some of the other bands you toured with on Mayhem, particularly Slayer, who you toured with in 201o on the American Carnage Tour and back in 1991 on the Clash of the Titans Tour. How did atmosphere on those tours compare to Mayhem, where you were also touring with a bunch of other bands from various generations?

We’ve done a lot of festivals like this. There are tons of these things in Europe where there’s three days worth of a mixture of bands, and you’ve got all kinds of different styles going on in one day. The big thing about Mayhem is you’ve got a lot more buses, a lot more trucks, a lot more people and it’s the same people coming out each day and it’s very busy. But we got it down. One day the stage would be a little further, some days it would be a little closer. But it’s basically the same  in one way or another. You tour and you have to kind of schedule your day around everything. We were going on earlier, which was different. We don’t usually go on so early on a rolling festival. But that was probably the biggest difference, other than the amount of people and trucks that were rolling together at the same time.

From what I understand, you guys chose to headline the side stage rather than play the main stage, right?

That’s what I hear. I actually didn’t chime in on that one. But it was really cool because there’s something about going on first on the main stage. I would have been fine with it either way, but it was a lot of fun. It was a smaller stage, but we weren’t thinking like that and it really wasn’t all that different. It was still a concert to us.

I know Anthrax, and Scott Ian in particular, have worked with WWE in the past, but I don’t think you were in the band then. Do you know if we might hear Anthrax in WWE again anytime soon?

From Mars to Canada to Europe, Joey Belladonna (left) and Anthrax are thrashing throughout the galaxy (photo by Matthew Rodgers)

No, I wasn’t around when they did that. But it would be nice to do some music for them. I don’t know if I’ll be getting in the ring, but I think just being part of that whole scene is cool and having some music involved with it would be really cool. I know a lot of people dig that stuff and [Chris] Jericho comes out to our shows all the time. And Triple H has used Motörhead’s music for a long time, and we have the same management. So, who knows?

Worship Music came out a year ago and it was your first album with the band since 1990’s Persistence of Time. Do you foresee yourself recording and touring with Anthrax again in the near future? Are you guys working on any new music yet?

Right now, we’re rolling and touring a lot. We don’t stop until December. We’re going to bring Testament and Death Angel out again for a third time in Canada in September and October. In November and December it will be us and Motörhead in Europe. But we’ve got some B-sides we’ve been rolling on, some more classic stuff. So we’re thinking of maybe doing an EP of B-sides. It’s still a tad bit early to be digging into any new stuff yet, and we’ve been so busy we need a little bit of downtime just to recharge. But I’m very excited to do something new once we have some time to sit with it. I’m sure there are some riffs in people’s package of ideas, but nothing collective yet.

For more information, go to www.anthrax.com.