Among the Living is Anthrax’s third album, released on March 22, 1987, and the record that turned the Queens band into a headliner. Produced by Eddie Kramer and dedicated to Metallica’s Cliff Burton, it packs Stephen King, Judge Dredd and a mosh pit into nine songs. It is the Anthrax album to start with, and part of it was taped live in Dallas.
The Short Version
- Released: March 22, 1987, on Megaforce in the U.S. and Island Records elsewhere.
- Lineup: Joey Belladonna, Scott Ian, Dan Spitz, Frank Bello and Charlie Benante.
- Made: Quadradial Studios, Miami, and Compass Point, Nassau, late 1986, with producer Eddie Kramer.
- Peak: No. 62 on the Billboard 200 and No. 18 in the UK. Certified gold on July 31, 1990.
- Texas link: live “I Am the Law” and “Caught in a Mosh” from the Arcadia Theatre, Dallas, July 11, 1987.
Why Is Among the Living Anthrax’s Best Album?
Because it is the record where everything the band had been building came together. Anthrax formed in Queens in 1981, made Fistful of Metal with Neil Turbin singing, then found its classic lineup when Joey Belladonna and Frank Bello joined in 1984. Spreading the Disease (1985) got them onto the Billboard 200. Among the Living made them a headliner.
The 1987 lineup was Belladonna on vocals, Scott Ian on rhythm guitar, Dan Spitz on lead, Bello on bass and Charlie Benante on drums. Ian, looking back, said the album did more than mark a moment: it gave the band a career. Our New York thrash history covers the scene it came out of.
The critics agree, then and now. Kerrang! gave it five out of five. Decibel made it the sixth album in its Hall of Fame in July 2005. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 20 on its 100 Greatest Metal Albums in 2017, and Kerrang! put it sixth among the 25 greatest thrash albums in 2020.
Anthrax
Queens, New York, 1981. Start with Among the Living (1987), then hear four of the same five players today on Cursum Perficio (2026).
How Was Among the Living Recorded?
It started with a death. In September 1986 Anthrax toured Europe with Metallica, from September 10 to 26. The last show was at Solnahallen in Sweden. The next day, September 27, Metallica’s tour bus crashed and bassist Cliff Burton was killed.
Anthrax went into the studio weeks later. From October to December 1986 the band spent about six weeks at Quadradial Studios in Miami, then moved to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, in the Bahamas, to touch up and mix. Compass Point belonged to Chris Blackwell, president of Island Records, the band’s label outside the U.S.
Ian has tied the record’s mood straight to Burton. Loudwire’s Jon Wiederhorn quotes him on the tribute song:
“Part of the reason that song and the rest of the album sounds so angry is because Cliff died.”
The producer was Eddie Kramer, whose credits ran back to Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. It was his first thrash record, and it showed in the first mix. Kramer dressed the songs in heavy reverb and effects, in the style of Mutt Lange’s work on Def Leppard’s Pyromania.
The band hated it. “Eddie and I actually got into a screaming fight over the direction of the mix,” Ian said, as Loudwire tells it. What they wanted, he said, was simple: “We want everything dry, everything raw. Everything in your face.” Kramer agreed and finished a new mix in under two weeks, and much of the album was cut live in the room.
Benante remembered it without grudges when the album was reissued in 2009. “But the record that we wanted to make and the record that he wanted to make were two different records,” he said. “At the end of the day, it came out good. I have nothing bad to say.”
Among the Living Songs, Track by Track
The lyrics come from paperbacks, comic books, the evening news and the road. Every song is credited to Anthrax, with former bassist Dan Lilker sharing credit on two. The original U.S. CD runs 50 minutes and 23 seconds, and the times below are from that release.
- “Among the Living” (5:16). Stephen King’s The Stand, told from the side of its villain, Randall Flagg.
- “Caught in a Mosh” (5:00). Inspired by a band technician dragged into a pit against his will. VH1 later ranked it No. 29 among the 40 greatest metal songs.
- “I Am the Law” (5:54). A tribute to the British comic hero Judge Dredd, built on riffs left over from the Spreading the Disease sessions. Lilker shares the credit.
- “Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.)” (4:54). The title is “nise fukin life” spelled backwards. It is an anti-drug song, prompted by John Belushi’s addiction and death.
- “A Skeleton in the Closet” (5:29). King again: “Apt Pupil,” the novella from Different Seasons.
- “Indians” (5:41). The plight of Native Americans forced to live on reservations. It was the album’s second single.
- “One World” (5:55). The threat of nuclear holocaust.
- “A.D.I./Horror of It All” (7:49). The tribute to Cliff Burton, and the last song written for the album. Spitz plays acoustic guitar on “A.D.I.”
- “Imitation of Life” (4:22). False faces in the music business. It reworks “Aren’t You Hungry?” from the 1985 album by Ian and Benante’s side band S.O.D., and Lilker shares the credit.
Where to start? “Caught in a Mosh” is the fun one, but “Indians” is the best song here. It is the most melodic thing on the record, and it shows off what Belladonna’s range added to a thrash band. For how S.O.D. fed into thrash’s overlap with hardcore, read our crossover thrash history.
The Cover, the Singles and “I’m the Man”
Don Brautigam painted the cover, the same illustrator who did Metallica’s Master of Puppets. Benante came up with the idea. For years fans read the grinning man in black as Rev. Henry Kane from Poltergeist II, or as Randall Flagg. Benante has said it is about how much evil lives among ordinary people, with one figure standing out and waving.
“I Am the Law” came out first, in February 1987, and made the UK chart. “Indians” followed in June, with covers of Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” and S.O.D.’s “Taint” on the 12-inch. Its video, directed by Jean Pellerin and Doug Freel, got moderate rotation on MTV.
The joke track earned the bigger certification. “I’m the Man,” a Beastie Boys-style rap parody riding a riff borrowed from “Hava Nagila,” first turned up on the 12-inch of “I Am the Law.” Expanded into an EP on December 8, 1987, it reached No. 53 on the Billboard 200, nine places higher than the album, and later went platinum. It is often counted among the first rap metal songs.
The record’s life did not end in 1987. A November 10, 2009, deluxe edition remastered the album for the first time and added outtakes and a London concert from November 16, 1987. In July 2021, Z2 Comics published an Among the Living graphic novel. Scott Ian wrote the “I Am the Law” chapter, drawn by longtime Judge Dredd artist Chris Weston, alongside stories by Corey Taylor, Grant Morrison and Rob Zombie.
Among the Living in Dallas: The Arcadia Tapes
The tour opened on May 26, 1987, at the Penny Arcade in Rochester, New York, with Metal Church opening. By summer it reached Dallas. On July 11, 1987, Anthrax played the Arcadia Theatre at 2005 Greenville Avenue, an old movie palace on Lower Greenville.
That night is on record. MusicBrainz credits all three live tracks on the I’m the Man EP, “I’m the Man,” “Caught in a Mosh” and “I Am the Law,” to the Arcadia on July 11, 1987. So the live “I Am the Law” that went platinum with the EP was a Dallas recording. Blabbermouth’s 2009 announcement of the deluxe edition lists a live 1987 Dallas “I Am the Law” among its extras too.
Z-Rock FM broadcast the show, and that broadcast now fills the first disc of Dallas Live in the ’80s, a two-disc set of Anthrax radio recordings. The July 11 set opens with “Among the Living” and “Caught in a Mosh,” takes in “Indians,” “Medusa” and “A.I.R.,” and ends with “Imitation of Life,” “Gung-Ho” and Judas Priest’s “Living After Midnight.”
The Arcadia opened on November 4, 1927, as an atmospheric movie theater designed by W. Scott Dunne. Cinema Treasures records that it was badly damaged by fire in 1940 and rebuilt in 1941. After it closed as a cinema it was used as a nightclub, and fire destroyed the building in June 2006. Our 1980s Dallas–Fort Worth metal scene piece maps the rest of the region’s rooms.
Arcadia Theatre Destroyed 2006
A 1927 movie palace on Lower Greenville that later ran as a nightclub. Anthrax’s July 11, 1987, show here supplied the live side of the I’m the Man EP. Fire destroyed the building in June 2006.
We found no licensed photo of the theater, so the card shows the record made there. Cover art: I’m the Man EP (Megaforce/Island, 1987)
West of Dallas, the same summer had its own business. Rotting Corpse cut its second demo at Pantego Sound Studio in summer 1987, with Vinnie Paul engineering. In that same stretch Megaforce, the label that released Among the Living in the U.S., came around, though nothing was signed. The discography lists the four songs from that session.
Where to Hear Among the Living Live
Anthrax has played the album front to back before: at some shows of the 2005 reunion tour with the Among the Living lineup, on the Metal Alliance tour in 2013, and again in 2017.
As of October 2026, Anthrax has no announced dates. The most recent Texas booking we found was September 29, 2026, with Iron Maiden and Megadeth at the Alamodome in San Antonio, on the Run For Your Lives tour. Songkick lists no further concert dates for the band in 2026.
The current lineup is Belladonna, Ian, Bello, Benante and lead guitarist Jon Donais. Cursum Perficio, the band’s twelfth album, came out on September 18, 2026. Watch the Anthrax calendar on Songkick and anthrax.com for Texas dates. To place the album against Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth, start with our Big Four explainer and our guide to the 1986 thrash albums that came just before it.
Start with “Evolvement” (1987)
Cut at Pantego in the summer that Anthrax was taping in Dallas, it is the band’s one science-fiction song, a master race finding out what it is really made of, and it sits well next to an album built on Stephen King and Judge Dredd. The words are on the lyrics page.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Among the Living
- Wikipedia: Anthrax (American band)
- Wikipedia: I’m the Man (EP)
- Loudwire: Jon Wiederhorn, Anthrax make thrash history with Among the Living
- Blabbermouth: Anthrax drummer discusses Among the Living deluxe edition (2009)
- Blabbermouth: Among the Living digitally remastered and expanded for CD+DVD deluxe edition (2009)
- Loudwire: Among the Living graphic novel release date and contributors revealed (June 2021)
- MusicBrainz: I Am the Law (live, July 11, 1987, Arcadia Theatre, Dallas)
- Sister Ray: Anthrax, Dallas Live in the ’80s (track listing)
- Cinema Treasures: Arcadia Theater, Dallas
- Anthrax: Anthrax with Iron Maiden in 2026
- Songkick: Anthrax tour dates
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Anthrax release Among the Living?
March 22, 1987. It was the band’s third album, released by Megaforce in the U.S. and Island Records everywhere else, and produced by Eddie Kramer with the band.
What are the songs on Among the Living?
Nine: Among the Living, Caught in a Mosh, I Am the Law, Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.), A Skeleton in the Closet, Indians, One World, A.D.I./Horror of It All and Imitation of Life. The album runs 50 minutes and 23 seconds.
Who is Among the Living dedicated to?
Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, who died in a tour bus accident in Sweden on September 27, 1986, while Metallica and Anthrax were touring Europe together. A.D.I./Horror of It All is the band’s tribute to him.
Was any of the Among the Living era recorded in Texas?
Yes. MusicBrainz credits the three live tracks on the 1987 I’m the Man EP, including I Am the Law and Caught in a Mosh, to the Arcadia Theatre at 2005 Greenville Avenue in Dallas on July 11, 1987.
Is there an Among the Living graphic novel?
Yes. Z2 Comics and Anthrax released a track-by-track graphic novel anthology on July 6, 2021. Scott Ian wrote the I Am the Law chapter, drawn by longtime Judge Dredd artist Chris Weston.
