Review: Anthrax – Cursum Perficio

September 24, 2026

Releasing a decade after their last record, officially the longest gap in time between Anthrax full-lengths, Cursum Percificio definitely sounds like the product of 10 years of Anthrax-brand indecision, uncertainty and rhythm guitar chugging, molded together piecemeal and left to stew in its own lack of clarity. Modern Anthrax records tend to have a real sharp critical divide between fans and detractors, and the initial reception to Cursum Percificio has been no different; I’m seeing it called a return-to-form, a continuation of their return-to-form, a testament to how they have not returned-to-form, and I’ve seen people question if they even have a form left to return to at this point, which I do think is a little harsh. If this sounds a bit familiar, then you’ll remember the release of 2016’s For All King’s, and can now consider yourself both ancient and also intimately familiar with the whole song and dance that is an Anthrax album release.

Because out of all of the Big 4, Anthrax are decidedly the odd one out at this point in time, lacking the commercial reach of Metallica, the thrash revivalist appeal of Megadeth, or the eternal influence of Slayer across every band active in extreme music. Shit, you would think with the prominent moment hardcore has been having the past few years, Anthrax would at least receive some more re-appraisal due to their punk pedigree, but apparently not. And I can understand it to a certain extent—I mean, fuck, when I was getting into metal I straight up didn’t understand the appeal of Anthrax. I only wanted evil-sounding, blistering thrash, so anything that didn’t sound like Morbid Saint or whatever just went over my head mostly. I came around eventually, though, and Anthrax’s run from 1985 to 1990 is one of the best runs a thrash band ever had. I’m even willing to extend some grace to the typically maligned Stomp 442. The appeal of Anthrax was the spirit and energy of the band, the eclecticism of their rhythms, a more bare-faced authenticity to their attitude, like a west-coast, shreddy Gorilla Biscuits. And while a lot of that sound is technically present on Cursum Percificio, so too is a weirdly over-bearing sense of self-awareness, and almost insecurity, in their sound, leading to an album that can’t decide whether to adapt or refine, ultimately doing neither.

“The Long Goodbye” is groovy and mid-paced, a combination Anthrax can make magic with. Unfortunately the song feels like a series of pre-choruses, indicative of an album without much resolution or complete ideas. Thankfully Belladonna sounds good and it has some of their sickest guitar interplay on the album, where on the bridge they counter this ugly legato riff with a shrill solo build-up to great effect. You do get an unexpected sense of sadness from the album, about as much as you can expect from a band like Anthrax, images of time slipping through your fingers, something that feels more authentic from a band that’s been on the go as long as they have. A mixed bag of an introduction, definitely hinting at wider issues of consistency throughout the entirety of Cursum Percificio.

Lead single “It’s For The Kids” is unfortunately just kind of bad, and is ironically a very tired song; I can’t imagine this appealing to any but the most ancient of Anthrax fans, but even then you compare its locked-in, mid-paced galumphing to early Anthrax’s speed metal-infused manic energy and it’s not a charitable comparison. A bizarre choice for a lead single, not emblematic of anything else on the album, which I suppose is a good thing. As usual a dynamite solo saves it from the pits of mid-paced dullness, the usual Anthrax emergency switch. The incredibly anemic lead riff of “Everybody’s Got A Plan” is loosely propped up by the most monochromatic, faceless chugging you can imagine. The central vocal progression just makes Belladonna sound weak—a massive crime—resulting in a song that just sound incomplete. For all its lyrics of blunt force trauma, no Anthrax song has ever sounded less like a punch in the face than this, with all the rocking edge and tenacity of a Trapt song.

Things shift gears, however, with “The Edge Of Perfection,” with its soft, clean guitar intro that belies a sick instrumental run that touches on the fringes of melodic black metal, and the verses have so much attitude and bite with their snotty vocals and this classy double-stop harmonic chug. The chorus is admittedly quite undeveloped, defined by directionless vocal flair sitting on top of a blasting, one-track instrumental, although the drumming does sound fantastic. It reduces what could have been a great, big sprawl across style and subgenre into something that’s just pretty good.

“Infectious” is actually a lot of fun, the type of stomping rock n roll shit that’s been in Anthrax’s DNA since day one. It’s hard not to smile at the bluesy swagger of Belladonna as he rides across an instrumental that puts itself in a continuum somewhere between ZZ Top and Kiss. It has this pure cocky arrogance to it, a song that comes bouncing on its heels, shit-eating grin on its face, totally sure of itself. “NYC 1993” sounds, on paper, almost completely in opposition to that but still retains that sort of self-satisfied swagger to it, just faster and more destructive. If you can glean some appeal from a song that sounds at times like a Madball song covered by Crush 40, you’d probably like this. Belligerently stupid in a way little else is, all the better for it.

Title track “Cursum Perficio” is an attempt to meet the rocking, rollicking sound of the last two tracks and the nominally darker tone found elsewhere on the album halfway. The sounds of clean guitar arpeggios are slammed shut by trademark chugging, ridden o’er top by a mostly forgettable vocal melody in the chorus, all making for a song that’s pretty unmemorable across its runtime. “T.O.M.B.” has a more enigmatic, dark introduction that’s shattered by the song’s arrival proper. It does this more than once, faking out the listener before diverting direction, becoming this driving, heavy beast as these compressed, staccato guitars transition into these open, breathable chords that give the song natural dynamic range. It’s unarguably the highlight of the record. “Watch It Go” tries to combine the plodding rock and roll of “Infectious” with speed metal flair, though feels less successful and more of an arbitrary back-and-forth. Never do the two styles feel well-matched on the track.

“My Victory” is self-celebratory, and Anthrax often thrive when they write bigger and more bombastic and relish in their own excesses, but it’s produced a little too flat and played a little too straight to stand out much to me. Whatever it represents as a testament to the band’s continued survival and self-survival rings a bit hollow because of how ineffectual the song is delivered and well, because of the entire album that has preceded it. How can an album of such widely-varying quality, of such wavering uncertainty in your artistic direction believably end in a ‘Yeah, fuck it, I’m thinking we still got it, we’re Anthrax, baby’ way? And even for a band as lyrically on the backfoot as Anthrax, “Satiric, so pyrrhic” is a fucking dog-rough line. So how does the album end? What’s the self-summation of the entire record, of what could very well be the last Anthrax album? Some directionless chugging that builds to nothing. Start as you mean to go on.

It’s hard here to singularly describe the shortcomings with Cursum Perficio; it’s such a loose bag of tricks, incomplete ideas and abandoned half-thoughts filtered through the recording process into a record that could’ve easily been titled Sufficient Works Vol 13. By the time an idea is developed enough to be worth your time forming thoughts on, it’s already been abandoned in place of another aborted idea or half-hearted re-tread. It’s like watching someone re-walk the same circle in a desert by accident, searching for an oasis, growing weaker with each revolution.

In spite of everything, Anthrax are too long in the tooth to be in some perilous position regarding their legacy, or to have to worry about generating interest in a new album outside of their loyal fanbase. So what do they have to gain by doing anything other than ignoring the 4 decades following Spreading The Disease? By doing anything other than occasionally knuckling down and putting out “better-” produced, more fatigued versions of albums that already exist, muted and dulled by age and rust? Anthrax have already experimented, gone sideways, sold out, bought back in, the whole process; they were a prominent thrash band who had to live through the ’90s. None were spared. So what would be gained for Anthrax if they made some war-death-thrash fusion record for a 200-cap GoatowaRex audience, all in the name of some bullshit underground credibility? And so Cursum Perficio is what we’re left with, the album you expected for better or worse, and maybe it’s a sick enough return to form for the most obsessive tik-tok pizza thrash revivalists out there, but to me it’s just not got the sauce.