Anthrax and Dixxon Flannel Co. have launched a limited Persistence Of Time flannel, on sale 20 August at 5pm.
Anthrax have worked with Dixxon Flannel Co. on a one-off shirt built around Persistence Of Time, released a day before the album turns 36. The earth tones of the 1990 sleeve have been redrawn as the plaid itself, with the band’s logo carried on the pocket and buttons.
It comes in Dixxon‘s bamboo fabric, sold in men’s and women’s sizes at $59.99 and youth sizes at $29.99, and goes on sale on Thursday 20 August at 5pm in a single limited run.
Persistence Of Time came out on 21 August 1990 through Megaforce and Island, the fifth Anthrax studio album and the last with Joey Belladonna until his return two decades later. The band produced it with Mark Dodson, recording between December 1989 and February 1990 at A&M and Conway in Hollywood and Soundtrack in New York.
It ran 58 minutes, went gold, and produced three singles: “Got The Time“, a cover of the Joe Jackson song that earned the band a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance, “In My World” and “Belly Of The Beast“.
Charlie Benante described the record in a 2018 interview as one of his favourites to make, and placed it at a moment when the whole genre was shifting.
“It was such a great time for the band and for music. We were, I felt, way more experienced. And even the bands that came up with us too had breaking moments at that point too; Metallica were putting out the Black Album. So things were totally changing. This was around 1990, and I think heavy metal was starting to become a different source for people,” he said at the time.
He addedv: “I think the Persistence record and the vibe that was around it was so much more… We were so free at that point to do what we wanted, and we weren’t worried like we were with the other ones. And the tone of it was just kind of darker, but I think that’s because of what we dealt with the prior year or two. We also had a fire during that time [at the band’s equipment storage space, destroying over $100,000 of their prized instruments and other gear]. So we were going through just life challenges as a band. And individually too, we were going through things. So I think that record is a complete reflection on us at that time.”
The fire tore through the band’s Yonkers rehearsal loft on 24 January 1990, in the middle of the sessions. Guitars, cabinets, drums and pre-production tapes were lost, along with the room the five had been demoing in since the previous autumn. They rebuilt the rig piece by piece and moved to another space in late February.
The record followed State Of Euphoria in 1988, the album on which Anthrax swapped the standard metal uniform for bright surf-style jam shorts, and drew a hostile response from sections of the music press, the British weeklies in particular.
“I think some of that backlash that happened towards the end of the cycle of [State Of Euphoria] had a bit of an effect on us too, which in turn is why the record after that came out to be a bit darker than the State Of Euphoria record,” Benante coontinued. “And I think during the State Of Euphoria time, things were starting to get away from us and I think maybe some of us felt that this was kind of becoming a little bit of a… I don’t know… We weren’t comfortable with things anymore — almost like a parody of what we were starting out to do. And I just think we had to regroup and say, ‘Enough. We did this. We wanna go back to the way we were,’ in a sense. I think the shorts got out of hand, the goofiness got out of hand — everything was just a little bit blown up to the point where it just didn’t feel that we were in control anymore. And like I said, we just needed to kind of regroup. And I think every band goes through a period like that too, where it kind of gets away from you for a little bit. And you just have to be aware enough to know that, ‘All right. Let’s pull this back a bit.’ You know what I mean?”
Belladonna was dismissed in 1992, with John Bush of Armored Saint taking over for Sound Of White Noise, and did not sing on another Anthrax studio album until 2011’s Worship Music. The band marked the record’s 30th anniversary in 2020 with a deluxe edition assembled by Benante, carrying revised artwork closer to the original visual concept.
Anthrax — Belladonna, guitarist Scott Ian, Benante, bassist Frank Bello and guitarist Jonathan Donais — count six Grammy nominations to date.
Anthrax‘s twelfth studio album, Cursum Perficio, arrives on September 18 through Megaforce in the United States and Nuclear Blast in Europe. It is their first in a decade, and Belladonna‘s third since rejoining.
