Scott Ian

Scott Ian — Scott Ian Rosenfeld, born in Queens, New York, on 31 December 1963 — is Anthrax's founding guitarist, its main lyricist and the only member present throughout the band's whole history. Anthrax is one of the four names of the so-called Big Four of American thrash metal, alongside Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer, and is the most atypical of the four. While the others worked with sombre themes, Anthrax brought humour, comic-book references and a willingness to experiment the others lacked. Much of that comes from Scott Ian. His most consequential contribution was the bridge to hip-hop. In 1987 the band recorded "I'm the Man", a track on which the members rapped over a metal backing — treated as a joke at the time, and recognised today as one of the first crossings between the two genres. In 1991 the band went further and re-recorded "Bring the Noise" together with Public Enemy, going out on a joint tour. That opened the way for everything that followed, from rap metal to nu metal. With Charlie Benante he also created Stormtroopers of Death, a side project whose album Speak English or Die (1985) fused hardcore and thrash so brutally that it helped establish crossover as a style of its own.