Anthrax’s wait is over. The New York thrash institution has released Cursum Perficio, their 12th studio album and first full-length in a decade, today via Megaforce Records. The set arrives with a black-and-white video for the title track that matches the record’s weight: grim, physical, and built around questions most bands don’t ask out loud after 40-plus years.
Cursum Perficio
Listen to Cursum Perficio on Spotify · album · Anthrax · 2026 · 11 songs
The phrase is Latin. It lands as “my journey has come to an end,” “my journey is over,” or “I complete my journey.” Scott Ian has said the lyric is about measuring a life — oceans of time, what you did with it, and whether the struggle was worth it. That is not a victory-lap slogan. It is a reckoning, and the band treated it like one.
They started cutting the album in earnest in 2022 at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 in Los Angeles. Jay Ruston produced with the band. The result, according to the camp, is as angry and alive as their best-known work, while still widening the edges of the sound that made them one of the Big Four. For All Kings (2016) debuted in the Billboard 200 Top 10. This one has been a long time coming.
To mark release day, Ian, Charlie Benante, Frank Bello, Joey Belladonna, and Jonathan Donais hit a late-night in-store at Guestroom Records in Louisville after their Louder Than Life set on September 17.
Director Don Argott — known for vérité work including the Taylor Swift docu-series — mixed documentary texture with a narrative thread. Actor and musician London May stars. May, who played drums and bass in Glenn Danzig’s Samhain, is shackled with a real metal chain, not a prop. He broke a finger on day one and asked them to keep rolling.
“‘Cursum Perficio’ brought out the beast in me,” May said. “That was real chain and real pain. I went through hell and back for Anthrax and Don Argott — and I’d happily do it all again.”
Ian: the video captures the themes in the lyric. Benante called the song the dark horse of the record and said the clip may be one too.
Anthrax already rolled out three tracks. “It’s For The Kids” is the classic ripper — buzzsaw riffs, Benante detonating, Belladonna on a hook built for the pit. “The Edge Of Perfection” opens on clean guitar and shivering cymbals before a blastbeat kicks the door in; Belladonna sings “My heart breaks… I’m on the edge of perfection.” “Everybody’s Got a Plan” pairs a live performance with backstage footage and old black-and-white boxing cuts, underlining the line everyone already knows: everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Cursum Perficio is out on standard CD; a Target CD with a fabric patch; standard black double LP with pop-up gatefold; plus Target red zoetrope, Amazon purple zoetrope, merch lilac, Metal Injection white, Talk Shop Live signed red ripple, and an indie red/orange/yellow exclusive — most of the vinyl in pop-up gatefold jackets.
Ten years is a long gap for a band this loud. Cursum Perficio does not sound like a victory lap. It sounds like a band that still wants to know what the journey was for.
