Songfacts®:

• This song is about the Holocaust, taking aim at the Nazis who unconscionably murdered millions of innocent people during World War II. It brings up issues of accountability and evil. Many of the Nazis explained away their sins by claiming they were following orders and had no say in the matter. But what would even cause one to give such orders? That's a question asked in the song: "Who is evil, who is blind?"
  
  No matter the motive, it's crucial that it never happens again.
• On the album, this segues seamlessly from the previous track, "Intro To Reality," which is an instrumental except for a bit of dialogue taken from a 1961 Twilight Zone episode called "Deaths-Head Revisited," where a Nazi officer accounts for his atrocities by saying, "We did as we were told."
  
  This sets the tone for "Belly Of The Beast," where Joey Belladonna sings:
  
  How could you dare to be so bold
  You only did as you were told
• "Belly Of The Beast" was released as a single from the fifth Anthrax album, Persistence Of Time. This was near their peak; they were filling theaters as headliners and opening arenas for Iron Maiden. Industry folks like them too: The album earned them their first Grammy nomination, Best Metal Performance, which they lost to Metallica's "Stone Cold Crazy." It ended up being their last album with lead singer Joey Belladonna until he returned to the band in the '00s. In the '90s, Anthrax declined along with thrash metal in general, but their legacy as one of the Big 4 (along with Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica) is secure.
• The music video shows behind-the-scenes footage of the band on tour in Europe. It was made by the man who pretty much invented this style: Parris Mayhew, who made one of the first metal music videos for his band Cro-Mags' 1986 song "We Gotta Know." In a 2022 Songfacts interview with Mayhew, he told the story of the "Belly Of The Beast" video:
  
  "Scott Ian from Anthrax calls me up, and he's like, 'Hey, can you make a video just like that for us?' And I said, 'Sure!' He said, 'OK. We're about to go on tour. I'm going to send you the itinerary and you pick eight days that you want to come where you think it would be good places to shoot.' And he sends me a European itinerary, which was fantastic. I said, 'OK. We'll land in Milan, and we'll leave in Berlin' – or something like that.
  
  I only remember that we landed in Milan because when we landed in the airport, there were all these soldiers in the airport – something that I wasn't used to seeing – with machine guns. And when we got off the plane with all this camera equipment, it was all stacked up in this big pile. These soldiers came up with these machine guns and were like, 'Where are your carnets?' It was like, 'Carnet? I don't know what a carnet is.'
  
  In the middle of explaining to me what a 'carnet' was, his eyes spotted that we had lanyards attached to the handles of all the cases that said 'ANTHRAX.' He was like, 'Anthrax?! You're with Anthrax?!' I'm like, 'Yeah. We're doing a video for Anthrax.' And then he started yelling stuff in Italian, and all the soldiers came running up and picked up all the cases and carried them out to the sidewalk for us, loaded them in the van, and sent us on our way.
  
  We shot the 'Belly Of The Beast' video for Anthrax over eight days in front of the Berlin Wall, the Colosseum in Rome. It was a great experience.
  
  Anthrax played a big role in facilitating my career as a filmmaker because they were the first ones that gave me a shot. They could have gotten anybody to do the video and they asked me, personally. It was a great experience. They were great to work for, awesome people."
  
  Mayhew went on to direct the 1991 Anthrax concert film Live Noize, and the Onyx video for "Slam."