John Bush on 80s Heavy Metal Podcast: Armored Saint, Anthrax Talk [24:01-29:02]

And it's just continuation of some of the great records that we made over the last few years, with Punch in the Sky, and when it ends down at La Raza, like I'm really proud of our records. I think we've really shown a lot of growth since the 80s, and we keep going, and it's going to make people who love Armored say happy. Sure. Is there anything in any of the catalog that has John Bush on it that you look back at, or just like, eh, wish I wouldn't have done that, or wish I would have changed this, or whatever? Ah, yeah, there is. I mean, I'm not going to divulge that because I decided before people like, that's my favorite song. Right. Sure. So, you know, I mean, I have my own favorites too, because I'm a fan. Right. But you know, I think throughout the years, I think we've made pretty solid records. I mean, you know, it's hard to say is anyone like horrific from front to back, you know, I don't know about that because, you know, I'm pretty hard of myself sometimes, but I don't think of them as I don't really want to put them up against one another. I kind of think of them as all my children, and you don't want to say that's my favorite child. Right. You would never say that, right? Even though maybe you feel it a little bit certain times depending on what that child, other child does, to have, you know, but to me, they're all different, and they're all just great in their own way. So, from March of the St. Deliverus Nomad, which we're honoring, 40th anniversary of this year, to Symbol, Mark Raising Fair, to, you know, Revelation and LaRaza and Win and Punch of the Sky, all the records since, you know, we kind of reformed, if you will. You know, they're all great in their own way, and I think we have a lot of killer materials, tunes. So, you know, headline shows are something that we do want to do here there, because then we could play longer sets and play a lot of different songs, and certain tracks, which I like to do as well. So, you know, they're all just different, but I think that I'm real proud of all the armored St. Records. Absolutely. Is there one moment in your career, whether it's concert, an album, a song, anything that you, you personally, after all this time in the business, you look back and you say, yeah, that was the peak, whether, you know, and again, it could be a show or a song or something you did with someone else, even. You know, I mean, believe it or not, I think we're maybe at the top of our game right now. I really think that armored St. enthusiasm is pretty high. I think that we're in a place where, you know, we're arguably bigger than we ever were. I mean, sure, you can go back to maybe when we're just saying came out in 1984, and can you deliver us being played on MTV? You know, we're pretty popular at that time, and then a couple of mistakes were made, and a couple of things happened, and we kind of took a dip. And then, you know, God, Dave became sick and lost his life, and that was pretty low, you know, emotionally for the band, and then we made simple salvation, we kind of came back, and that was, you know, maybe arguably one of our most popular records, and one that's pretty deep, and then we kind of rebuilt, and then, you know, then I left and joined Andrax, and so we took a dip again, so there's been a lot of ways that we've ridden on this journey, but, you know, we're at a good place. I mean, we, those last couple tours that we did were awesome, and we sold more merchandise than we probably have ever sold in our history. So, I'm basing it on that, I think, we're at a pretty high level right now, so, you know, we'll kind of try to ride this wave. We don't want to take another dip here if we can avoid that. Right on, man. Well, there's no dip in sight as you've got two, two great sets of shows that are coming up. You've got the Armored St. Michael Shanker tour, which starts in October, and then, of course, in December, you've got the celebration of the songs of Andrax. John, where's the best place we should send people to keep up with you, to follow you on Instagram, or to, you know, get merch, or get tickets, or any of that kind of stuff? You're always going to go to armoredstain.com. You can go there, of course. And then, at official John Bush is the Instagram page. So, that's the IG page, if you want to look at, you know, what's happening with me on a fairly daily basis. You know, it's, those are the two places. And, you know, we're excited to be going out there and playing some shows. Don't forget in Britain, and we're playing with Wasp, so, that's going to be real exciting, because we're playing the old London Hammersmith Odien, which is, you know, Aversmith Odien. Mostly to Aversmith, and lots of every bands of play, have plays, and it's legendary. Plus, we're playing Newcastle, first time every time. Every time we've been in Britain, we've never played there, so that's going to be the first time we've played there. And then, the Chinkertour, it's only in the Southwest of the States. So, we're sorry for everyone else, but those last days, we're conflicting with it, so we couldn't do the whole tour.