Ten years separated two Anthrax albums.
For All Kings arrived in 2016. Cursum Perficio followed in 2026.
On paper, it looks like an album that took a decade to make.
It didn’t.
THE YEARS AFTER FOR ALL KINGS
Anthrax did not finish For All Kings and immediately disappear into a studio for ten years. According to Scott Ian, the band remained on the road supporting the record through the end of 2019.
By then, another album should have been the obvious next step.
But inside the band, the process was not that simple.
Charlie Benante has spoken openly about reaching a point after For All Kings when he did not want to make another album. Making records demanded enormous time and energy, and for a while he questioned whether he wanted to put himself through that process again.
Eventually, the urge to create returned.
Then 2020 arrived.
THE ALBUM THAT COULDN’T START
Anthrax had intended to begin moving toward another record in 2020. The pandemic stopped that plan before the band could properly get together and work.
The songs, however, did not stop.
During lockdown, Benante kept writing and recording demos. Ideas accumulated while the members were physically separated.
That distinction matters.
The clock between Anthrax albums was running, but Cursum Perficio was not being actively made for all of those years.
Scott Ian dates the real collaborative phase to early 2022, when Anthrax could finally get back into a room together and begin turning the accumulated material into songs as a band.
FROM DEMOS TO A RECORD
What followed was not a rushed comeback.
Anthrax worked through the material, arranging and refining it together before recording at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 in Los Angeles, with Jay Ruston and the band producing.
The process stretched across several years.
Ian has said he finally had a finished copy of the album in his hands by November 2025.
Even then, the public still had to wait.
Benante later said changes around the band’s management and team contributed to the record arriving later than originally hoped.
Cursum Perficio was finally released on September 18, 2026 — ten years after For All Kings.
TEN YEARS — BUT NOT TEN YEARS IN THE STUDIO
That is what makes the gap more interesting than the headline.
It contained the final years of the For All Kings touring cycle.
A period when one of Anthrax’s principal writers was unsure whether he wanted to make another album at all.
A pandemic that stopped the band from working together.
Years of demos and ideas.
And, eventually, a return to the room where those fragments could become an Anthrax record.
Cursum Perficio did not take ten years to make.
It took ten years for Anthrax to reach it.
THE STORIES BEHIND THE NOISE.
SOURCES & LINKS
Nuclear Blast — Anthrax Announce New Album Cursum PerficioAnthrax Official Store — Cursum Perficio
Apple Music — Cursum Perficio / Charlie Benante album notes
Blabbermouth — Scott Ian on the Cursum Perficio timelineV13 — Charlie Benante interview
Big Takeover — Frank Bello interviewHot Metal — Charlie Benante on album delay