Anthrax has released XL, a new live album and concert film capturing the band’s 2021 40th anniversary streaming concert.

Even without a live audience, the performance finds the “Madhouse” metallers thrashing as hard as ever. Speaking to ABC Audio, guitarist Scott Ian compared the experience to filming a music video.

“You tend to go at it even harder than you would normally onstage in front of a crowd, because you’re really trying to sell it,” Ian shares. “You really want it to look big, feel big, and feel exciting and feel full of energy, and have it come across on a screen.”

Early on in the pandemic, Ian enjoyed doing those “quarantine jams” with his friends and other artists, where each musician would send in individual tracks to be combined into a single video. Then later in 2020, he joined the Mike Patton band Mr. Bungle for their livestream concert.

“I think that was also a big catalyst for me to know, like, ‘It would be great to one of these with Anthrax,’ because this Bungle one was great,” Ian says. “We all tested every day, and it was safe, nobody got sick.”

“It was, I think, my first little light at the end of the tunnel,” he adds.

In keeping with the 40th anniversary theme, the XL set spans Anthrax’s entire career and even includes their cover of Public Enemy‘s “Bring the Noise” with a guest appearance by Chuck D.

“The fact that we were able to have him be a part of [the concert], not just because it’s gonna make the livestream better, but because it is such a huge part of our history and we got to do that again as part of it, for us, it just felt so good,” Ian says.

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