If one watched the Chicago Bears beat down the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football this week, one might have also tuned in early enough to hear Anthrax singer Joey Belladonna perform the national anthem. Hopefully, you did not feel the need to adjust your television set.
Belladonna has performed the anthem plenty of times before, even at a Seahawks home game in 2022. He isn't from the Pacific Northwest, though, so the ties to the team seem odd. He does have a long-standing connection to the area musically, however, made stronger being able to do the anthem.
The problem on Monday, specifically, was that Belladonna was not in his best voice. Some of his notes were far off key, and sometimes he held a bad note so long that one might have wondered if he was doing that intentionally. He wasn't; he just underperformed as badly as the Seahawks did.
Anthrax's Joey Belladonna performing the national anthem is nothing new
That doesn't mean Belladonna is a bad vocalist because he is in his genre. He's even done the anthem better. Those watching his seemingly out-of-context rendition on Monday without any knowledge of what he had done previously might have been confused and dismayed.
He might even return to Lumen Field to do the national anthem in the future, or perhaps do the song for one of the teams in his native New York. This is a safe assumption because he keeps getting asked to perform the tune by various teams in different parts of the country.
A rockin’ start to Monday Night Football 🤘 @jbelladonna @Anthrax
— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) November 3, 2026
📺: @ESPNNFL pic.twitter.com/kqrAS7y3AZ
The first time he sang the national anthem was at a Chicago Bulls game in 2013. He did the honor for a Bulls game again in 2016. He has also performed the anthem at Chicago White Sox (2019) and Cubs (2016) games. But Chicago and Seattle aren't the only cities.
Twice, he has sung the song at Buffalo Bills games (2017 and 2019). He performed it at a home game for the Denver Broncos in 2023 when they played the Kansas City Chiefs. He last sang the anthem for a Syracuse Crunch hockey game in 2025. The Crunch are a minor league hockey affiliate of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
All of this is to say that while the Anthrax singer didn't do his best job on Monday, he clearly is capable of performing the song well because he keeps getting a chance to sing it. Hopefully, the next time people watch Joey Belladonna on their TV screens before a sporting event, he impresses in the same way he usually does.
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