Released: 1990
Tracks: Time; Blood; Keep it in the Family; In My World; Gridlock; Into to Reality; Belly of the Beast; Got the Time; H8 Red; One Man Stands; Discharge
Best tracks: Time & Got the Time
Track to skip: none
This was the first ‘new’ Anthrax album for me, so I guess it’s always had a special place in my heart. One thing that I always noticed about this album was how serious it is. Traditionally, Anthrax would throw in some goofiness for each album. This is really the first album where there isn’t any sort of silliness or inside jokes or the “Not Man” or any of that stuff. PoT is clearly their heaviest album so far and definitely the most serious. They’ve gotten quite good at tackling the topic of hatred/prejudice with 3 on here outspokenly about that: Keep it in the Family, Belly of the Beast and H8 Red (uh, ‘hatred’). As always, that’s something I really admire about Anthrax, how they sing about more serious and important stuff. What I keep coming back to, though, is just the overall seriousness of this whole album. Even the instrumental, Intro to Reality, is more on the serious side. I think this is the first instrumental the guys have done and it’s a nice one. It’s basically a 12-bar blues, but done Anthrax style. It reminds me in a way of Ace Frehley’s Fractured Mirror (from his solo Kiss album)…kind of builds on itself during the course of the song.
The track that really got my attention was the cover of Joe Jackson’s Got the Time. I still haven’t heard the original so I can’t compare, but I still love this song. It’s a quick 2-minute almost punk rock tune with a cool bass solo and a nice relief from all the heavy, sludgy stuff. In a way, that ties into my main complaint on this album. While they are good songs (not really so much Discharge, it’s average), the last 3 tracks really drag this album down. It’s like this unrelenting heaviness, and then…the album just ends. Discharge is a really bad choice for the closing track. Average tune, but as a closer it shouldn’t be there. Minor complaint, though. Nearly all of these songs are great with Time, Keep it in the Family, In My World & Got the Time being the best. If I had to choose the best of those it’d either be Time or Got the Time, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Even though it starts to drag at the end, it’s still a good album and probably Anthrax’s best up to this point. Most people are going to say Among the Living is the best, but who knows how many of them heard this one or Sound of White Noise. Solid album.
Rating: 92
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