I always remember the spring of 1989 as the season where I discovered thrash metal. Inspired by repeated viewings of MTV’s Saturday night all-metal show Headbangers Ball, I purchased a copy of Anthrax’s State of Euphoria. The biggest shock to my 11-year-old brain was not the album’s bone-crunching riffs nor the numerous f-bombs, it was the fact that the opening track “Be All, End All” started off with a cello riff.
These days, it’s fairly common to associate classical stringed instruments and heavy metal. After all, Metallica has released two albums performed in conjunction with the San Francisco Francisco Symphony. But at the time I purchased the Euphoria album I found the inclusion of the cello to be almost a form of sacrilege. “How dare these headbangers defile their album with a classical instrument,” I thought. Okay, I didn’t quite put it in those terms, but you get the idea.
Thirty-plus years later I’m happy to admit I was wrong. The short, stringed section of the track is actually one of the most memorable parts of the album. So much so that even today, I can easily hum it. “Ba-Da, Ba-Da-Da-Da, Da-Da.” It was the first song that popped into my head when I associated the words “cello” and “rock n’ roll.” Kind of like Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and “cowbell.”
Surely, I’m not the only Anthrax fan who feels this way. There’s a clip of the band performing the track at one of the fabled Big Four concerts in 2010 (which featured Anthrax, Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth) where vocalist Joey Belladonna encouraged the crowd to sing the melody in unison. Such a precise performance by the audience was no doubt inspired by that wonderful cello.
Studio version:
Live 2010:
