Charlie Benante And Carla Harvey On The Role Of Art And Music Amidst Pandemic

Amidst pandemic, with traditional live performance off the table for over a year, musicians have been forced to find new ways to make a living and fill time, separated from what’s become their primary revenue stream while off the road and home for a rare extended period amidst quarantine.

Nearing their 40th year, heavy metal stalwarts Anthrax had begun work on their twelfth studio album. As it was for so many, being forced to hit pause indefinitely proved to be a depressing development for drummer Charlie Benante early in 2020. But immersing himself in art and music alongside Butcher Babies co-frontwoman Carla Harvey soon helped to illuminate a brighter path forward.

“The last place that we traveled was Los Angeles. We were in L.A. on Valentine’s Day of 2020. We came home and right after that, the s—t hit the fan. Everything came to a halt,” said Benante. “At that point, I was watching the news 24/7 and looking at my phone 24/7. ‘What’s going to happen?’ I was doing this daily and it was really affecting me. I was getting so depressed. And I wasn’t doing anything else. And Carla actually said to me, ‘You need to turn this off. You need to go and do something.’ And what I did was do what I did when I was younger: I would come home from school, go in my room and play my drums - be creative again.”

“When me and Charlie first met, we kind of developed a bond because of the fact that we were both artists. I remember before we even started dating, we sent artwork back and forth. We had a little crush on each other maybe,” explained Harvey. “We kind of emailed art back and forth. I think I also sent him a package of my prints. Also, during the pandemic, we spent a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table drawing together on Friday nights rather than going out to the bar or to restaurants - because we couldn’t. So I thought it was really special to have an event like this together and do an art show. It’s a great culmination of all that we’ve done together during the pandemic.”

Harvey and Benante’s artwork and anecdotes appear in the new collection Punk Rock & Paintbrushes: The Insides Of Artists Written By Outsiders, a coffee table book now available for pre-order (ahead of release on April 15, 2021) which makes the connection between music and art via images and words from members of groups like punk rockers Pennywise (Jim Lindberg) and alternative hip hop outlet Jurassic 5 (Chali 2na) alongside that of visual artists, skateboarders and more. 

Punk Rock & Paintbrushes is the online home to an immense array of artwork created by musicians. In celebration of the book’s forthcoming release on April 15, Benante and Harvey teamed up on a gallery display of their work in Chicago earlier this month. 

To date, Anthrax has tallied four gold albums in America while selling more than 10 million records around the world, standing alongside legendary acts Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer as thrash metal’s “Big Four.” 

Despite having promoted their art during installations at music festivals like Riot Fest, the Chicago appearance at Zhou B Art Center on the city’s south side marked Benante’s first actual gallery display despite decades spent creating.

The drummer has frequently drawn and designed Anthrax album art and recently illustrated one of the covers in the new Anthrax graphic novel series. The brand new collection, a collaboration with Z2, chronicles each of the tracks on the group’s breakthrough 1987 album Among the Living, with Benante’s cover featuring famed comic hero Judge Dredd, the focus of the Anthrax song “I Am The Law.”

In addition to duties as metal vocalist, Harvey has also written and illustrated comic books and released a novel. 

Whether its lyrics or prose, both tie together the ideas of music, words and imagery with the ultimate goal of driving narrative.

“I like to have about eight songs in and then I see where it’s going. And then I start to just get a vibe for the record. I visualize something in the title and then I just go from there and I just build around it,” said Benante of his traditional approach to creating album cover art for Anthrax releases. “I got most of my art education at the record company art departments. I got to work with so many amazing people who worked on classic album covers. People at Atlantic, Warner Brothers - all of them in the art department were just amazing. And I learned what colors are striking and what colors do not work when people walk through the bins.”

“Writing was one of my first loves. I spent a great deal of time writing stories. I just love telling stories. So I think it’s very natural. It goes hand in hand putting it all together,” added Harvey. “I’m working with an artist right now for my next comic that’s coming out. When people really do storyboarding for a living, it is crazy. They can just immediately adapt what you’ve written into art form. It’s an incredible thing to watch. So I’m really excited about not doing everything for my next comic and actually letting someone else handle the art while I do the writing. It’s all storytelling. Whether you’re writing a song or a comic book or a novel or drawing a picture, it’s all telling a story in a different form.”

Harvey and Benante travelled a similar path, with both attending art school before focusing on their music careers. 

While it’s frequently cut from American curriculums today, both had music and art in the classroom from an early age, a respite during uncertain adolescent times with a variety of easily applicable residual benefits.

“I think that besides the obvious idea of learning different skills, you also learn to think outside the box,” said Harvey. “The arts were an outlet in school. I didn’t have many friends. I was a misfit. And so I felt safe in that classroom. I think [it’s important] having an hour where there’s a place that you can go and for one hour feel safe - because it’s all about your creativity.”

“That was my release,” Benante concurred. “I would pray that I had art. Sometimes I didn’t have it in certain grades.” 

Comics proved to be an early flashpoint for both artists, with Harvey citing the impact of The Hulk while Benante gravitated toward characters like Batman and Spider-Man. 

The Anthrax drummer cites personal favorites like Salvador Dalí, comic illustrators Jack Kirby (Captain America), Bernie Wrightson (Swamp Thing), Brian Bolland (Judge Dredd, 2000 AD) and Alex Ross (Spider-Man) as well Looney Tunes animators Fritz Freleng, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. 

But for Harvey, the marriage of music and art was especially powerful.

“When I was a kid, all I cared about was art and heavy metal. I was a lonely kid. I came from a broken home. I had a lot going on in my head and my escape was sitting in my room and drawing comics to heavy metal,” she said. 

“I remember going into the record stores when I was young - when you could still go sit on the floor in a record store - and flipping through albums. I think the reason I even found heavy metal was because of the artwork on albums. It was always just a little bit darker and caught your attention - and made you want to see more,” said Harvey looking back. “It’s not metal but it was probably the most influential album for me in my youth - and that’s [Guns N’ Roses’] Appetite For Destruction. The original artwork had a Robert Williams painting on it. And I always was really drawn, even in my youth, to very sexual art and very comicy art. And Robert Williams just has this way of drawing women, over the top women, which I’ve always loved,” she said. “It’s scary but enticing at the same time. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. My dad bought me that album - and my mother threw it away when I came home with it from my dad’s house,” recalled Harvey with a chuckle. “And then the music itself. It was my first real taste of rock and roll - but being a lifestyle.”

In the early days of pandemic, encouraged by Harvey, Benante launched a collaborative video series called “Quarantine Jam.” 

Inspired by the untimely death of Rush drummer Neil Peart in January of 2020, “Quarantine Jam” began as a series of socially distanced Rush covers (“YYZ,” “Freewill,” “Red Barchetta”) and grew to include Harvey, who handles lead vocal on a particularly delightful take of Tom Petty’s “Yer So Bad,” his Anthrax bandmates and guests like Corey Glover of Living Colour and Ra Diaz of Suicidal Tendencies. 

That series has now turned into an album. The aptly titled Silver Linings is now available for vinyl pre-order via Megaforce Records ahead of digital release on May 14. 

Legendary Run-DMC rapper Darryl McDaniels guests on the project’s first single “Run-DMC Medley,” hitting on cuts like “King of Rock” and “Rock Box,” picking up where Anthrax left off following a 1991 collaboration with hip-hop heroes Public Enemy thanks to scorching guitar work from former Anthrax guitarist and current Volbeat axeman Rob Caggiano. 

Fun quickly emerges as the project’s central theme. 

“I knew that my friends who were in bands were probably going through the same thing,” said Benante, observing the rough start that came to define 2020. “So I asked them to play some songs together. And that’s how it all started. From there it snowballed.”

“It was fun and I always say that I think we developed an even deeper level of intimacy by sharing that time together that we’d normally be out at a bar or restaurant. Instead, we sat in the kitchen and learned how to record my vocals or we were painting together,” added Harvey of working alongside Benante creatively following the onset of COVID. “It actually ended up being a really cool thing and a chance for us to bond over music and art. It was a blast.”

As Anthrax approaches a once unthinkable 40 years, Benante is clear on the role music continues to play in his life.

“It’s all been a dream. Certain things that happened, even to this day, I’m so grateful for. And that’s the truth. It’s like, this is a gift. And you really have to appreciate it and grasp each moment,” said the drummer. “Music is something that it doesn’t matter what language you speak - it’s universal. And it hits you in such a way that you cannot put it in words. It just does something.”