By Jim Barber
If you’re looking for a full-on, authentically high octane, true-to-the-spirit of the classic thrash metal sound, and you happen to be in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto around the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, you’d be doing yourself a favour to check out the original voice of ‘Big 4’ thrash metal legends Anthrax when he comes to your town.
Brooklyn, New York born and raised, Neil Turbin is playing Friday, Oct. 10 at The Brass Monkey in Ottawa, Saturday, Oct. 11 at The Piranha Bar in Montreal and Monday, Oct. 12, at The Rockpile In Toronto. Tickets are available at www.ticketscene.ca/frontrowpromotions.
Turbin, who also fronts metal band, DeathRiders, has written songs for Quiet Riot, been a music journalist, vocal instructor, sideman and collaborator in dozens of other musical projects, and is also a 2019 Metal Hall of Fame Inductee, believes audiences want more than just a routine recitation of songs and albums when they come to hear a live show. They want energy, they want to hear the songs played and sung and arranged better than they were originally. He also firmly subscribes to the theory that for more die-hard fans of a band, they want to hear, as much as it is possible, the songs they love, that they have grown up with, that have become an integral part of the soundtrack of their lives, sung by the artist who originally recorded them. Because of the deep love fans of bands such as his former collaborators Anthrax have, they understand the depth of the connection between the writer and performer and the song. They understand that no matter how talented another person is, no matter the power of their chops, their vocal range, timbre, intonation, performance excellence – hearing the original song by the original voice just carries more resonance and meaning. And it makes those shared moments between the artist on stage and the audience that much more meaningful.
This is why, for the last couple of years, Turbin has been performing, under his own name, all of the songs for which he made a contribution as the singer and/or songwriter for Anthrax in a series of shows throughout the world, including the aforementioned short run in Ontario and Quebec.
The set features songs from the first three Anthrax albums, including their 1984 debut, Fistful of Metal, on which Turbin sang every track, and has a writing credit on all but three (one is the short instrumental ‘Across the River’ and another is the band’s raucous cover of the Alice Cooper classic ‘I’m Eighteen.’) as well as the band’s second release, the Armed and Dangerous EP which came out a year later, which features Turbin as co-writer on all but the cover of The Sex Pistol’s ‘God Save the Queen’ with his lead vocals appearing on ‘Soldiers of Metal’ and ‘Howling Furies,’ which were only released on the EP’s 1992 reissue. That’s because by this time, Turbin was out of the band. He also had two credits on the band’s next full-length album, October 1985’s Spreading the Disease.
Very much in the way Paul Di’Anno established a unique sound for the first two Iron Maiden albums, Iron Maiden and Killers, many of which long-time fans prefer, or at least set apart as special, to the many later releases under Bruce Dickinson, there is a difference in the tone of the songs, in the vocal performances and lyrical content of Turbin’s Anthrax compositions that are still held in the highest esteem to this day by both new fans and old, making for a receptive audience wherever he chooses to tour.
“The way I put it is if you had the choice, and of course it’s not possible now (because Di/Anno died in October 2024), but if you had the choice right now to see Paul Di’Anno singing the songs from Killers, or Bruce Dickinson? I mean, I love Bruce Dickinson for Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind and all the other albums. But for Killers and the first Iron Maiden album, and even Maiden Japan, do you want to see Paul or Bruce singing that son. Some people might prefer Bruce to sing that. Well, I would prefer Paul Di’Anno for those songs because I was there listening to those albums when they came out in the early 1980s, and I was in love with them, and I know lots of other people were as well. His voice on those songs was just ingrained in me. Or how about the band Riot. Would you rather hear Rhett Forrester singing ‘Swords and Tequila’ or would you rather hear Guy Speranza singing ‘Fire Down Under’? To me, there’s no contest. It’s not even a matter of who’s a better singer or who’s a worse singer. That’s not the conversation. It’s a matter of what’s authentic or not,” Turbin said from his home in Los Angeles, before embarking on a South American tour.
“It’s like, if your into fixing up Chryslers, do you want the genuine Mopar parts or do you want aftermarket because, by the way, if you do, you’re changing the parts on the car. They’re not the original parts that were designed for the car. I mean there are lots of other examples, like Van Halen. I mean, today you don’t have Rob Halford singing songs that ‘Ripper’ Owens did when he was in Judas Priest. But you did have singers in Anthrax who came after me singing my songs. I think all of them, actually, have sang my songs. You have to ask, did I own the song, in terms of my performance. Did I put a stamp on that song that gave it a characteristic so that it sounded like me. I just think that if you can own it, like Lou Gramm did with Foreigner, if you can make it your own, if there’s something unique that you’ve infused into it, you’re in the energetic field of the fabric of what makes that song it’s own thing, your expression, almost your DNA is imprinted into those notes, there’s nothing like it. The delivery, the execution, the feeling; when you connect with songs and you connect with all of that power and emotion, and the vibe, that’s what was happening for me with those early Anthrax songs.
“For example, I would go to my room to write at the time, and that’s where I wrote lyrics and worked with the melodies; I worked with all these ideas. For the song ‘Armed and Dangerous,’ I’m looking at these martial arts and military type magazines, those were some of the things that influenced me then: Bruce Lee and some of the weapons magazines and related martial arts and military stuff. It gave me the feeling of being armed and dangerous. So how do I express that? That was something I really connected with and what I was thinking about and it resonated with me. Writing that song was an expression of how I connected with that material. The other Anthrax guys really didn’t have much to do with that. They wrote riffs. And I also had a really cool arrangement that would have made the song make more sense, but it all got changed by the time it ended up on the recording that Anthrax eventually did. I play it the original way these days because that works better for my delivery. Also, I’ve lived with these songs for 40 years or more, so I’ve had the experience and the benefit of hindsight. I want that song, and all the songs, to be the best they can be. So I reverse engineered and reworked the songs. And I’m recording all of these songs that I wrote or sang on or recorded with Anthrax.”
While Turbin has had a lengthy and fulfilling career since leaving Anthrax 40 years ago, there is still some lingering, not so much bitterness, but more like disappointment in how his short tenure of just two years came to an end. He believes there was jealousy from his bandmates that he was getting the majority of the attention as the frontman, and that they were more interested in following the musical and stylistic paths being forged by their pioneering thrash metal contemporaries, Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer.
“The thing that Anthrax did was they did a lot of down picking. They wanted to be like Metallica, and that came after they initially wanted to be like Iron Maiden and other bands like Judas Priest. But once they heard Metallica, they wanted to sound like that. Dan Wilker came in and he was influenced by a lot of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands, like Angel Witch and later Mercyful Fate. From my standpoint, I really had influence from Riot and Saxon, especially Riot’s Fire Down Under and Saxon’s Wheels of Steel and Denim and Leather albums. And also Accept, the Breaker album [1981], but also Restless and Wild [1982]. Ultimately, for me, it was about having songs that really left an impression and brought the energy level up. So, for me, having a signature delivery that goes on top of that, that is in the delivery of the lyrics and the vocals, those were the things I was thinking about. But I couldn’t collaborate with the rest of the band because they were so loud in rehearsal. There were no conversations. And it seemed to be more about people’s egos being stroked. We were never able to sit down and really rework songs. I always had to take the song home and work on it on my own. And then we played Monday through Friday the same 10 songs over and over and over again. So it was kind of like redundant repetition. It wasn’t practice. It was just repetition. In a proper band practice you try to be better than you were the last time. You try to change things, to improve things. What did we do last time that we could change and make it better this time? There was never those discussions,” he said, more out of sadness than anger.
“I think part of it may have been the age we were at. We were pretty much all 20 or 21, I was 20. We weren’t mature enough. We chose songs to be tuned a certain way, or to a certain pitched because the band was trying to be Metallica. They wanted to play the sound that became the stereotypical sound for thrash bands. They were more concerned about conforming to what they thought was the thrash sound. I tended to have a different opinions. I wanted to the songs to be heavy, I wanted to have heavy rhythms, heavy on the percussion, where there was this momentum and power in the drums and in the guitars. And when I reworked the Anthrax songs for my show, the songs are actually heavier and the drumming more complex – we’re using a lot of double bass. We’re not trying to make a prog song out of a thrash song. In the guitar fills, the don’t have to sound like they’re manic, they’re very slow. And what I do with the drums is double time. We keep the same melody. And everything is in the spectrum of those harmonic notes. It’s got more fire, more energy, more power, more fierceness. I really look at all parts of the song to see how I can make it better, but I have to stress that I don’t ever change something just for the sake of changing it. I don’t have an ego issue, where I’m trying to show off. I’m not looking for validation or a pat on the back or anything like that. There’s a point in the process where a song sounds good, but there’s also a point where it sounds great, like a golf shot when you hit the sweet spot. But then there’s the point where it gets to fast, or too out of control.”
A group of hyped up, excitable young men are always going to be a recipe for some sort of chaos and conflict. It’s the law of the jungle. And when you add in the fact that this group is comprised of heavy metal musicians, from Brooklyn, New York. Yeah, it’s almost inevitable that jousting of the verbal and possibly fistic variety happens. It was no different for embryonic Anthrax, as with many other bands (remember, Megadeth formed because Dave Mustaine was pissed after being hoofed out of Metallica.)
Fistful of Metal, as raw as it was, does sound different than the band’s subsequent albums, and stands apart from those of Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer, primarily because of Turbin’s vocal range. He definitely was channeling more of the soaring nature of Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson, and even Saxon’s Biff Byford, than the more growling, guttural intensity of Tom Araya, Mustaine and James Hetfield. Again, it’s a matter of taste, not one being better than the other. It’s just that Turbin’s then bandmates preferred to fall in line, sound wise, with them, than chart a somewhat tangential course, as preferred by Turbin.
“I don’t think Anthrax was thinking about differentiating themselves too much. I don’t think that was at the forefront of their decision-making thoughts. I don’t think they thought my approach, and me as a person, was valuable to them. I think it was all about the fact that there was a lot of jealousy, a lot of emotion, a lot of manipulation, a lot of gaslighting. It was immaturity, and a lot of ego. I did things for the sake of saying how do we make the song sound great? How do we make the song better? And there’s not an emotional attachment to that for me. I’m just totally passionate about making good music. That’s where I was coming from. Other folks were more concerned with, ‘how does this make me look? How does this make my guitar solo work? Am I the star of the show?’ Like, what about the song? Is that important to anyone? ‘How does the singer make my guitar playing look?’ That was an actual thing. Like, why would that even be a thought? How does the singer make my guitar playing look? Well, if the singer sings the right notes and sings the right words and has the right timing, everything should be fine. But I think some people, when I would be singled out or complimented they would take it, like, ‘oh, so you like him better than me. You like how he sings, but you didn’t say anything about the guitar playing.’ So, you can see how a person with that kind of shallow thinking, that kind of disordered thinking would think that. Unfortunately, that’s the reality of the world we’re in. And in bands, it’s hard enough when you have one person who’s like that, but when you’ve got two, that’s even worse. But when you’ve got three people, I mean, you’re totally outnumbered and there’s nothing you can do that’s ever going to be good.
“And as I’m dealing with all that I’m thinking to myself, I just want to play great music and write great songs and be part of something great. I was not thinking about how to manipulate people to get my way, or blame shifting. Again, it’s back to our age and maturity. They thought that being disrespectful is something that you should laugh at. Like, no, it doesn’t make me laugh when people are disrespecting me and it doesn’t make me feel like I don’t have a sense of humour if they’re disloyal or untrustworthy. But that’s a dynamic that unfortunately was very prevalent in the band. I kind of held on for two years when I should have bailed out way earlier. But I didn’t know any better. I was pretty naive too. It was just a hostile environment, a hostile work environment. So that prevented us from having the ability or the willingness to get into the details of making these songs better. Bands will eventually mature and grow, because if they don’t they won’t last. And I know Anthrax has done different things in their career, but at that point in time, Anthrax didn’t have the level of sophistication. So, all of this is why I’m putting so much meticulous detail into revisiting these songs, when I am re-recording them. And the cool thing is I’m not dealing with anyone else’s egos, and I’m also not on a clock where a record label is on my back. We’re working on it diligently, we’re will release it in due time, the right way. What’s the point of doing something less that your best? What would be the point? So no one can hear it? It’s gotta be great. It’s gotta be a three-letter word – Wow. If it ain’t wow, then it ain’t happening.”
Turbin reiterated how important it is for him when revisiting the older Anthrax songs in recent years is that they don’t remain stale in the live setting. He has spend countless hours working with other musicians to improve them, to tap into their essence and make them sound the way he had hoped they would when they were first written and recorded. So when folks go to see him at The Brass Monkey, or Piranha Bar or Rockpile here in Canada, and if they expect to hear note-for-note recitations of them, they may be disappointed. Although he believes real fans want to hear his improved and intensified versions because there is even more of what made them special in the first place injected into their proverbial flesh.
“You have to be real careful because this music has been embedded in their brain pan for 40 years or more. So they’re used to hearing it in a certain way. There’s going to be fans who are angry that we didn’t play the song note for note. Or they’re going to be mad because we changed something. Well, that’s too bad if you don’t like it. That’s fine. Then just listen to the album. Don’t go to the show. Don’t come to see something that has evolved or something that’s grown. You know that f***ing tree that was in your backyard as a kid, when you come back to see it five years later, did you f***ing think the tree was going to stay small? It grew. Things grown, things evolve. The artists change. I went back to look at the way I sang these songs back in that era, in that time frame. And I had to relearn how I sang things the wrong way and reverse engineer them to understand them and dissect how to make them better, and how to optimize my performance today. I’m really drilling down to understand because this is what the fans want to hear. They want to hear something that’s authentic. It’s genuine. It’s the original. Of course there’s some things that you can change, and there’s some things that you probably shouldn’t. Certain iconic melodies on guitar and certain little riffs that people are familiar with, you don’t really want to change too much. But there are certain places where you can add some things, in the fills, or in the dynamics, or the way it’s played. So that’s what I’ve done throughout all the songs. I’ve gone in and meticulously broken them down.”
Turbin said it’s been more than a decade since he performed in Canada, and back then it was memorable, not just because of the excellent and rowdy audiences, but because he got a full blast of Canadian winter.
“The last time I was there was in 2014. I played across the border four times with a band from the U.K. The routing of the tour was back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. We came through back and forth twice through Windsor, and then we came in through British Columbia to play Vancouver and Victoria. But who routes this stuff in the winter time going back and forth to Canada when its 30 to 40 degrees below zero in Winnipeg or in Saskatoon. I remember when we played in Edmonton, it was 40 degrees below zero. I mean, they could have sent us to Florida or Texas or something,” he said with a laugh.
“But I’m very excited to be coming back and performing in Canada. We’re very, very umped to be able to bring these songs and the show, The Armed and Dangerous 40th Anniversary, show to Canadian fans. And I know from my experience in Canada, the fans in Canada certainly are thrashers and rabid metal headbangers. They are also very knowledgeable, they know their music and their metal history, so knowing they have that experience, I know the songs I’m bringing to them are going to go over very well.”
For more information, visit https://deathriders.com.
For tickets, visit https://2025.ticketscene.ca/artists/neil_turbin. VIP, meet and greet tickets are also available.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
