The legendary Scott Ian is currently in-country for his One Man Riot tour, and we were able to get some time on the phone with the man himself to talk about what we can expect from the One Man Riot tour, when we can expect some new Anthrax material, what his favourite horror movies are and more! Scroll down to see it all now.

MANIACS: You're coming to Australia for Spoken Word tour, is there anything in particular that you'd like to share about that tour? What can people expect?

Scott: I've been asked thousands of times I would wager, doing interviews through my whole career "what's the craziest thing I've ever seen" or "who's the craziest guy I've ever met in a band". Everybody always asks those questions and that's basically what my show is. It's me telling stories from my life. If anyone's ever had that burning question inside of them that they want the answers to, that's what they're going to hear at my show.

MANIACS: Can you give us a preview of anything?

Scott: It's hard to say just because I have so much material to pull from. Usually, the way I do these shows is within the first 5-10 minutes on stage I will have a good idea of where I'm going next, but I think it's safe to say there will definitely be a story about Dimebag. It's not just one story, it's actually a three-part tale. It's an epic discussion of my friend Darrel. I think that story will probably show up at these shows.

MANIACS: You've appeared in The Walking Dead, you've appeared in Game of Thrones, and you've had your own show. Is there anything coming up you can tell us about? Any Cameos?

Scott: A lot of that stuff happens when I'm not as busy touring, but our touring schedule has been so hammered down since For All Kings came out, so it been really difficult to do anything other than just be in Anthrax. That's not a bad thing obviously, but it does take up most of my time. If I'm not with Anthrax, I generally want to be home with my family, so a lot of that stuff happens if I can find a window. Like these shows coming up in Australia.

I got invited down to do the Brisbane and the Sydney Comic-cons and I said yes to that and when I realised I was going to have a week off between the two weekends, I asked to see if I could get some talking shows. It just worked out perfectly and it's really the rare occasion that I get to do these things. So this is my big side-thing now - being able to come down and do some talking shows.

MANIACS: Speaking of TV - are there any shows at the moment that you would recommend checking out?

Scott: I just finished Handmaid's Tale season two. That show's really brutal and really hard to watch, but I think it's brilliant. I'm also watching that show Castle Rock now that's based in the world of Stephen King and I feel like it's kind of a slow-burn but I'm glad I stayed with it.

MANIACS: You're also a fan of horror. Are there any recent horror movies you've been into? There seems to be a resurgence in the genre.

Scott: I loved The Witch. I thought it was great. Just recently there was a movie called Hereditary which I thought was really good. I just watched a movie yesterday on Netflix called The Ritual. Kirk Hammett called me up and said to me "You have to see The Ritual. If you haven't seen The Ritual yet you have to watch it" so I watched that yesterday on our day off and I really liked it. I was very happy Kirk told me to watch it.

I love The Conjuring movies, I'm really looking forward to that movie The Nun that's from the same universe. I like a lot of the new horror movies that are more like throwbacks to 60s and 70s horror. It's the torture-porn movies of the 90s/00s that I never really got in to. I've never been a big fan of the Saw movies or things like that. I don't care about people getting tortured for 90 minutes. I want a story, and I want suspense. There's been some really great movies involving that kind of stuff int he last few years for sure.

MANIACS: Way back in the day you did Bring The Noise with Public Enemy. Do you see yourself working with any of today's hip-hop artists?

Scott: It's hard to give you a definite answer, but it's not like anyone's calling us, and there's not anyone out there that I'm interested in working with. Put it this way: I stopped listening to any hip-hop since around 1994. I couldn't tell you something that I've really gotten into in hip-hop in 24 years. All the old stuff I still love, but at some point in the 90s hip-hop just lost me.

MANIACS: Slayer are hanging up the gloves soon and doing their last tour. Anthrax have been doing this for around the same amount of time. Should we be worried that Anthrax are calling it quits any time soon?

Scott: There's no talk of retirement in our dressing room. As cranky as we get sometimes and as beat up as we get on tour, the fun of playing shows still outweighs any of the negatives of travelling or being away from home. We still love doing this and we still love making records. We still love being a band and there's nothing to worry about as far as our camp is concerned.

MANIACS: Have you guys got any new music that you've been working on?

Scott: There's a lot of ideas but we haven't started working on anything. We thought this year we were going to spend most of it writing but at some point in late 2017 we got the call about coming out and spending a hundred shows with Slayer. So where we thought we were going to have most of this year off touring, we ended up pretty much touring most of this year. So all the ideas of getting into the room and arranging new material have been pushed into 2019 now. Unless Slayer calls us again and says we need you for all of 2019, then we'll all be in a room together making new music.

MANIACS: Can we expect Anthrax to come back here within the next 12 months or so?
Scott: I can tell you Australia is one of the only places we have not been on the For All Kings touring cycle and that's not cool at all as far as I'm concerned. We've been pushing for it for a while and I can tell you we will have an answer to that question soon. I refuse to be denied as far as us coming there on this album. We're not going to make a new record until we come to Australia on this record.

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