COLUMN: NIGHT BEAT: Mike Weatherford

Anthrax comes to the House of Blues today as part of a tour promoting the band's new greatest-hits package.




MIKE WEATHERFORD

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      Timing is everything in the entertainment industry, and it turns out that Anthrax was a little ahead of its time with the rap-metal thing.
      While Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit shouted rhymes over heavy-metal guitars and drums to multiplatinum results last year, it was Anthrax that showed the way in 1991 with "Bring the Noise," its collaboration with Public Enemy.
      Today, Anthrax is still plugging away on the club circuit as the rare heavy-rock band to remain together since the early '80s. The quintet has resisted the urge to follow its own lead, sticking to its own brand of metal instead of jumping on the hip-hop gravy train.
      "We could have done `Bring the Noise' part two and three, but we didn't want to do it," says drummer Charlie Benante. "We just wanted to stay in that whole metal-rock area."
      However, the band members don't mind credit where it's due.
      "Everybody expects us to be (bitter), but for the most part, I never take away success from anybody," Benante says. "It's just that sometimes I would like to hear, `Hey, Anthrax are the ones who did it first.' "
      Anthrax had established itself as a creative thrash band -- even willing to try comedy in the title track to 1987's "I'm the Man" -- when the band teamed up with politically charged rap duo Public Enemy.
      "It was pretty adventurous at the time for a metal band to do something like that" but the joint venture provoked a backlash from fans.
      "It's not as easy as it is now, where a lot of these guys just accept it. We might have lost a good part of our audience for doing that," Benante says.
      Today's tour that visits the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South, is a retrospective tied to last fall's "best of" collection, "Attack of the Killer A's."
      The plan was to feature both original singer Joey Belladonna as well as John Bush, who replaced him in 1992. The two singers even paved the way by trading vocals on a remake of the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" as an extra song for the hits package.
      At the last minute, however, Belladonna bailed out.
      "Let's say we couldn't come to a financial agreement," Benante says. "Everything was great up until a certain point, and then he changed his mind."
      But Anthrax thrashes on, despite an uncertain future.
      "I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if we'll stay around like this or blow up again at some point," Benante says of the band that includes guitarist Scott Ian and bassist Frank Bello.
      "I always think that we got into this for one thing. We just love making music, whereas I guess maybe other people get into it for the wrong reasons," Benante says.
      "People get into the business maybe thinking it's cool and it's the way to get chicks and drugs and booze, whatever. Well yeah, I agree with some of that stuff. But for the most part, since I was a little kid, music has always been inside of me and needed some way to get out. That's why I still continue to do it."
      Three other bands crowd onto a busy bill that begins at 7 p.m. Chevelle, a trio of brothers from Chicago, and the raunchy rock of The Unband pave the way. Then comes Fu Manchu, a pumped-up '70s fuzz-guitar act that doesn't sell many records, but gets lots of ink from rock scribes who use the band to wax nostalgic about Deep Purple 8-track tapes and Chevy vans with bongs spilling water onto the orange shag carpet, etc.
      Admission is $23 reserved and $20.50 general admission.
     
     More metal
      There's more of the hard stuff on Saturday when Powerman 5000 returns with the fast-rising opening act Static X.
      Last October, you had to put up with an iffy outdoor bike expo to catch Powerman, headed by Rob Zombie's brother Spider One. No wonder the band's return to a "legitimate" venue, the House of Blues, is an advance sellout.
      The quintet's second album, "Tonight the Stars Revolt!" is getting radio exposure through the song "Nobody's Real," but "it's still about the live thing," Spider noted last fall. "We'll be touring for probably a year and a half on this record. ... To be a real band in people's minds, you've got to get out there and play, and you've got to be able to pull it off live."
      Static X -- aided by the video-friendly Don King hairstyle of frontman Wayne Static -- is making noise with "Push It" and "So Real," which is part of the soundtrack to "Scream 3," arriving in theaters today. Dope, also on the movie soundtrack with "Debonaire," opens at 6:30 p.m.
     
     Games with 311
      Get those trigger fingers twitching. Saturday's Sega Dreamcast Championships on Saturday at GameWorks, 3785 Las Vegas Blvd. South, offers the finals of a yearlong arcade-game promotion with a soundtrack by 311.
      Jimmy Kimmel from Comedy Central's "The Man Show" and Eric Christian Olsen from the Fox network's "Get Real" host a showdown in which top scorers from around the country compete for a $15,000 grand prize.
      It's the second visit since December for 311, which radio embraced in 1996 with airplay for "Down" and "All Mixed Up." More recently, "Come Original" from the "Soundsystem" album continues the band's eclectic blend of robotic hip-hop and reggae rhythms punched with rock guitar.
      Tickets are $20 for the 7 p.m. event.