ANTHRAX drummer Charlie Benante says that he is “tired” of not being recognized as a pioneer of the “blast beat.”
He discussed his role in developing the blast beat during an August 2019 interview with Drumtalk, which has just now been uploaded to YouTube.
“There’s this style of beat called ‘blast beat,’ and I will say that the first time ever that type of beat was recorded and played on a record was on this S.O.D. [STORMTROOPERS OF DEATH] record that we did in 1985,” Benante said. “And I’m tired of people not crediting that that was the first time. And, of course, people perfected it and play it way better, but that was the first time that a blast beat was on record.
“If you can prove me wrong, prove me wrong, but I believe that that was the first time,” he continued. “And, like I said, other people have mastered it and done it way better, and I never took it any further — that was it. It fit in that song ‘Milk.’ Like, when we would play it live, the more I played it, the more I started to develop a different way of playing it. Because I would always play it with a single kick drum, and I would either reverse it, which I think Paul [Mazurkiewicz] from CANNIBAL CORPSE played more of that style of blast beat.
I would play it either with the ride or I would play it with the hat, reversing it,” Benante added. When S.O.D. would play more and more shows, I would always develop it and not just do a single kick — I would throw in a double. And then I discovered that some of the black metal bands, later on, were doing it [slightly differently]. So it was being developed even more.
“And then when I heard the DIMMU BORGIR record Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, Nick Barker‘s drumming on that record was, to me, one of those moments where another door opened and he took the blast beat style to a whole other level.”
