 Jimmy K here, Metal Voice. Look at this. The Metal Voice shirts are now on sale, just go to the video description to find out on how you can purchase one. Metal! Welcome to the Metal Voice. Who are we on the show today, Alan? Charlie Benanti, a fellow that we love having on. We don't have him on nearly enough. That's the problem. Look, I went to get my anthrax shirt. I love it. I'm the man. You designed this, or you kind of like sketched it? Is that what it was? Well, I think that whole concept of that rubber doll figure, the story for the not bad is pretty, I'll tell you really quick. We were signed to Island Records and the name of this album was spreading the disease. They did this ad for us with his face on it and it said, by George, I think he's got it. And that ad was everywhere and all of a sudden people started throwing the rubber puppet things on stage. And then we put him on a shirt and it just became this iconic type of thing and it just never stopped. So that was it. Anthrax version of Eddie. Basically, yeah. Was not taken from Wayne's World or was it before Wayne's World? Or was it the other way around? It was the other way around, yeah. Scott in his neighborhood in Queens in school, because his name was Scott, I think they would always say Scott not. And it became like a thing where you would say not as no. And then it just became something. And then Wayne's World picked that up and became mainstream. There's got it. Wayne's World. Okay, here we go. On the show today, Silver Lining, due out on May 14th on Megaforce Records. Not a solo album. Let's not confuse it with a solo album. A collection of cover tunes by Charlie and Friends. Well needed breath of positive fresh air during these dark times. That's exactly where the title comes from is Silver Lining. I tried to see out of the darkness and the depression that there was silver linings. I would see comments from people all over and just things online. I'd be like, man, we're all going through this. Some of us are having it way harder than a lot of people are. And there are silver linings. I would see people complaining about their kids and shit like that. And it'd be like, man, enjoy it. You're getting to have all this time off to spend with your kids that you would never have, like enjoy it. Just embrace it. So just little things like that, man. People love complaining. It seems like sometimes. And again, I was lucky tuning in on your YouTube channels and all the little songs you've done with Rush. And now we've got a whole album with these covers on it. It's just fantastic. But you know, I wasn't going to even put them out like this. And I kept getting asked to do it more and more and more and more. And I was like, all right, I'll do it. And I don't know, man, it was just hard to choose which ones to put on there. Because if I put the Rush songs on this, it would take up a lot of the space on it. I had the idea to put a Rush EP out for Record Store Day next November. So we're going to do that. That's going to be fun, because it's just going to be all the Rush songs by themselves. So that was like, okay, I could do that and then concentrate on some of the other songs. But a lot of the songs on this record are just songs that were always in the back of my mind, songs that I loved. And I just had to find the right people to make them happen. And once I did, we were off just snowballed into... Allen and Charlie, to me, it brings me back to my childhood, I guess, because we're all more or less the same age, right? And you too and run DMC and public image. And so to me, it's kind of like going back in time a little bit of a different time, a different era. I got to say, I'm most impressed with Mark Isigüe, who's been on the show a lot of times. His vocal delivery on U2 and it's just incredible. Mark keeps getting better. He keeps getting better over the older he gets, the better he gets. I always said that I heard this quality in Mark's voice that maybe he's another one that maybe I pushed him out of his comfort zone for the U2 stuff, but I knew he could do it because I always heard it in his voice. The Mother Love Bone song to me was... That was easy for Mark because we bonded over that type of stuff and I knew Mark can handle that and do a great job. But the U2 song, I think, maybe pushed him a little bit more. But he's a pro, man. He made something happen and I was so happy about it. You know, we got Paul Stanley, who released Soul Station, something completely different from what he's done in the past with KISS. And now we got, you know, your choice of selection for this is equally as different and amazing. Yeah. I mean, I left off all my Motown songs, but you know, but yeah, exactly. Paul Stanley, I think, is probably embracing his childhood like I did. You know, when I would come home from school, I'd be so excited about coming home and playing the new Rush album on the drums. And this was the same thing. I'd come up to my art room and I set up a digital drum kit and I would just play like it was when I was younger. And I think that's the thing that, as a musician, you need to find the passion and the love that you had and bring it out now, you know? So that's exactly where this comes from. And I knew some other musician friends of mine were probably experiencing the same kind of dark, depressing things that I was. And that's why I asked some of them to do this, too. Transylvania. Look at that. I mean, now we're saying, wow, okay, well, there's an odd choice. Transylvania, you know, an instrumental. What do you remember from the Diano era of Maiden? I mean, is that your favorite era or is it just a more memorable one? First time I saw them was with Paul Diano. It was at the Palladium in New York. They opened up to Judas Priest and I went both nights. And when Iron Maiden came on, it was that excitement and that feeling of I'm witnessing something for the first time that is, I don't know if I'll ever see it again. But it was so amazing. That band, to me, since day one was the reason why I think we started a band, you know, to model our band like Iron Maiden. Yeah, like a lot of bands from that time. Yeah, I think so. I think that band single-handedly created the form of music that would become thrash metal. I would agree. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, what I take away from your album here is, you know, I was unfamiliar with the U2 song and the Mother Love Bone song, but I knew exactly who they were without having these songs heard them before. And in Transylvania, you've got the guitar sound and everything that's right from that era. So hats off. I mean, you put this right into that timeframe. Yeah, that was the one thing about what I would tell everybody. I like the attention to detail. I want it to sound as authentic as the original as it possibly could be. So even the drum tones, I tried to get as close as possible to each track, like the Fleetwood Max song. I wanted it to have that 70s vibe that sound. Yeah, it does sound. Yeah, it's got the vibe. It definitely has the vibe. You nailed it. You nailed it. Yeah. You know what, you're actually, you're bringing these songs that people maybe our generation didn't hear to a new generation. And I think you're sort of, it's crossing into another world, I think. That's what I think. I mean, I'm listening to them. And yeah, I know Mr. Speed and I know, you know, all the way, but maybe that's more of a, you know, all the way is a deeper cut that maybe the newer metal fans will say aren't really familiar with. Those two Kiss songs have always been some of my favorite Kiss songs. And I treat those songs as if they were Rock and Roll All Night or Detroit Rock City. They've always been up there for me, especially all the way. I always wished that all the way was on alive just to have that sound and that treatment. And Mr. Speed is just a classic Paul Stanley song. It's just one of the greatest. It's got to be 40 years since I heard that song. So thanks for putting that on the album. And I guess that's what I'm getting at. That's what I'm kind of getting at. So much memories. It's like, wow, I've completely forgotten about that song. You know what song I forgot about was Public Image, Public Image, right? I haven't heard that song in ages. You know, I'm a big Sex Pistols fan that I am. And Public Image, not so much, but I do like a few tracks that I think are killer from the band, you know? And that one is just, and actually you kept it, the essence of it is still there, that vibe, that pure vibe, that the original one. It sounded kind of like the original in a way, I mean. Well, the thing about that song is my friend is in the band Sump 41. We always wanted to do one of these together and the trade off was I wanted to do Public Image and then they wanted to do a collection of like kind of metal songs, you know? So we did that too, but didn't make it on this release. But the Public Image song and a funny story about Public Image in general, back when I was younger, my sister was a hairstylist and she would work in Manhattan, New York, and her salon that she worked at was down in down the city and below the salon was this store called Disco Mat and it was a record store. And sometimes I would go to work with her and she would give me money and I'd spend hours in Disco Mat, you know, buying or looking for whatever. One day I was in there and there was one other person in the store. This was early, this was like 11 before lunch and this guy had on a long tweed jacket carrying a bag and he had like a beret on. As soon as I saw him, I said, it's Johnny Rotten. And I immediately went right over to him and as I got closer, he turned to me and he went like that, which meant do not bother me. So I continued to go through this store looking for what I got and then I noticed he was checking out, paying for what he was, you know, purchasing or whatever. And he called me over and I went over it and we had a little discussion like what's going, what are you doing here? And he says he's working on a new project which would become Public Image. And we talked a little further. He never said the sex pistols broke up or anything. And then he took a Disco Matt card, turned it over and signed it for me. And I still have that card. That's cool, man. That's cool, man. And I'll never forget when I first heard that first Public Image, I was blown away because it wasn't, it didn't sound like the sex pistols, but there was something about it. This avant-garde type of, the bass player was, wasn't a jaw wobble, which is, everything was just great on that and Johnny was great. And yeah, so that's my Public Image story. That's not too many people, you know, bump into Johnny Rotten like that, you know, so that's pretty cool. What about... I almost bumped into Donald Sutherland with my car here in Montreal one time. Oh, really? It's okay. I bumped into Kenny Rogers. I was swimming and I bumped into him in Acapulco. Is that true, really? It's true. Yeah. I was swimming and boom, I bumped into Kenny Rogers who was in the pool in Acapulco, this nice place and and at first you're kind of like wondering what is, who is this guy in front of me, you know, like this is like back in 1980s something, you know, like who's this guy? And then, then everybody swarmed around him in the pool and it's just like you signing autographs after that. It's, anyways, whatever. He had a sharpie. It's just weird, man. It's just weird, but, but anyways. That's a great story. Yeah. This is, this is what I find fascinating from, from where you are, where you, where you grew up in New York and you had these sort of American black hard rockers and rap and it all kind of mixed together, you know, look at funny vibe from, you know, from living color and, and the Beastie Boys and this, this mesh anthrax was sort of at the forefront of this metal rap sort of soul thing happening or funk. I mean, can you tell us a little bit about that and how much you love that type of music and how you like to integrate it into, I don't know if that's a question. No, no, no. I mean, the funny thing about that whole vibe or that sound that was coming out of New York, it was always something that to me, there was no boundaries. Like, I just, I just liked it. You know what I mean? There was never a question of you shouldn't like it or, or anything. So it was just open to me. It's like it's music. I hear it. I like it, you know. So that basically the, when anthrax were going to do a song and it was like around 19, it was like 86 around that time, we were going to do this song called I'm the man that we wrote. But the Beastie Boys were originally going to do it with us. They were going to do the rap. And, but scheduling wise, it wasn't going to happen. You know, they were on a different level at that point too, you know. So we decided to do it. And that's how that happened. But we were completely in love with like certain types of rap music, especially like the Run DMC stuff, the Eric B and Mark Campbell is another one. And man, I don't know, for me, growing up in the Bronx, I mean, graffiti to me was like, you know, I was used to it. I saw it every day when I would come out of school on the train. And so I'd always loved it. I never thought of it as vandalism. I just thought of it as like, I love that. That looks cool. So anyway, that's, I think that's why I kind of embraced rap music. Would you ever would you ever put another form of rap in a future anthrax album, like maybe have, you know, Chuck D or some guest, are you still open to something like that? Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I was, I'm working with with D right now on the song that is coming out pretty awesome. I must say, like I was like, Whoa, this is taking off like really well, but I won't discuss that now. We'll have you back on to discuss. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Call you in a week. I mean, you know, I'm the man, we just go ahead. No, I was gonna say we've always been open to something else, but we always said if we couldn't top like to bring the noise thing, then we didn't want to do it, you know, man, we wore out the grooves on I'm the man, vinyl. I still got it downstairs. It's it was it was something back in the day was really something different and that just everybody latched on to. So it's such a fun song. And it was it's one of those things where it's kind of accidental that it happened, you know? Yeah. You know, okay, so what else? Okay, you got this coming out and it's what may I'm gonna go back here May 14th, a mega force. Then you got this book, this coffee table book is you want to just tell us about that quickly? The art book, the art book. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So the art book that's that's that's out is a collection of artists that punk rock and paint brushes have worked with and have found and we have a chapter and at Carla and I and it just tells a story about how we got started in an art and it has some of our paintings and stuff like that. And that's basically the gist of it. Other artists are in it and it's a really cool book of different types of art. It always amazes me how I always said, you know, you walk this way for a reason. That means you talk away for a reason that means you're gonna have a totally different type of artist artistic view of things too. And it's so it always amazes me how, wow, you did that. You know, just I'm always astonished by by people and what they can achieve. They really pushed themselves. No, I mean, we've had the time unfortunately too much time the last year just kind of develop a lot of stuff and push ourselves, like you said, to explore new avenues and then just do something different for the sake of doing something. Right. Exactly. That that was the whole reason behind like the whole year was spent doing music and art and and trying to stay safe, you know, making sure my daughter was safe, making sure I was safe, like Carla was safe, like we just follow the guidelines and, you know, try not to panic. And that was it, you know, and just be good good people to each other. And I guess on a last note, you know, an update on anthrax, I mean, since you had all this time, you know, you're doing a solo work, is there any update on a new album or what's going on there? Are you allowed to talk about it or? I mean, we are going to start working on the record again. I mean, before COVID hit, we had about seven, eight songs that were killer. And we're going to continue working on those and more. So we didn't want to put a record out during this time, because we felt it would just get stucked up in that COVID vacuum. So we wanted to wait. And so at least we can go out and play these songs, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's been a while. It's been a while. I guess it's been some time now. When was the last one? Four years ago? Four years ago, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think February of 16. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Is there anything else you want to throw out there? Is there anything else in Charlie Bernanke's world here? No, I'm going to go have a cup of coffee in a little bit. And no, man, I just, I'm encouraged to, you know, to get out and start doing things again and maybe get back to normalcy. I don't think it's going to be the normal that we once had. I think there's still going to be a couple of little guidelines that we're going to have to follow. But the most important thing is just take care of each other here. You know what I mean? In America, things have gotten really ugly and I want to take it back to a place where you are nice to your fellow neighbor and it's just not an asshole to people. Yeah. Yeah. Some healing. Some healing is indeed, and that's what they need. This Rush EP, are we putting 2112 on? Or are we putting Xanadu on? What are we doing here? We're putting Anthem on. Anthem. We're going to have Anthem. No, no, we're going to have, we have, what do we have? We have YYZ, we have Red Barcetta, we have Free Will, we have LaVilla is on there. Cygnus. No, and then we're doing one new one that's going to be on there and we're going to premiere that next week because April 5th will be the one-year anniversary that I put out the first quarantine video and that was a Rush song. Well, yeah. That's right. That's right. So April 5th, which is next week, we're going to put out the last and final Rush song. And we should tell everybody to do that too, Alan. Go check out Charlie Benaté's YouTube page where all these quarantine videos are, right? And forget that. And pick up the coffee too. Pick up Charlie Benaté's coffee. Please pick up the coffee. I got bills to pay. There you go. On that note, go ahead. The YouTube, it got me through the past year. We're really enjoyable and all your guests host, guest people playing the instruments. It was a great thing. I thank you for that because it really lightened some dark days for me. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And it actually lightens some of my darkest days too. We had Frank Bello on in the past with Jimmy. Some of my favorite interviews between Jimmy and Frank. And we thank you. You're always a gentleman, Charlie. And it's always a pleasure to have you on the show here on The Metal Voice. Thank you, guys. I can't wait to play Heavy MTL again. It's like one of my favorite, I'm not kidding, my favorite festival. It's that one. Yeah, we had a good time inducting you there. It was fun. It was, wow, man, this is crazy. Yeah, it was good.