Songfacts®:

• "Cursum Perficio" is Anthrax's way of taking stock of time, mistakes, and survival, asking whether four decades of struggles in heavy metal have ultimately been worth it. The Latin title translates to "I complete my journey" or "My journey has come to an end," which sounds definitive until you hear the track. But don't Anthrax are announcing their retirement. They're merely looking back on a career that started in 1981 alongside thrash pioneers like Metallica and Megadeth.
  
  Guitarist Scott Ian described the song's scope as "epic," wondering, "How do you quantify your life? How do you measure oceans of time, and what did you do with it? And were all the struggles worth it in the end?"
• The phrase "Cursum Perficio" comes from the crest tile embedded at the front entrance of Marilyn Monroe's final home in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Drummer Charlie Benante discovered it while watching a documentary about her.
  
  "When I found out what the phrase meant, it immediately clicked with me," he recalled. "We aren't saying this is our last record, but our journey has come to an end. I believe we've completed the task."
• Pop and new-age fans might recognize the phrase: Enya previously used "Cursum Perficio" as a track title on her 1988 breakthrough album Watermark, the record that spawned "Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)." Her song was also sparked by a Marilyn Monroe documentary.
• "Cursum Perficio" never appears in the lyrics. Instead, Joey Belladonna translates the idea into plain English, singing "The journey's over" and "Your journey's over." The song ends with the idea that success and failure come down to individual choice; the journey may be complete, but that doesn't mean the band is finished.
• Serving as the title track to Anthrax' 12th album, the song also speaks to the long road of getting the record made. Cursum Perficio was their first album in 10 years, following For All Kings in 2016. The long gap wasn't planned. The band had intended to write a new album much sooner, only for external delays and world events to stall their progress. "It certainly was a journey from A to B for us to get this album made," Scott Ian told Full Metal Jackie, noting it was the first time they had gone in with the best intentions only to have "the world tell us no."
  
  Recording began in earnest in 2022 at Dave Grohl's Studio 606 in Los Angeles. Longtime collaborator Jay Ruston, who produced Worship Music and For All Kings, returned to co-produce the record alongside the band.
• Directed by documentarian Don Argott, the song's black-and-white music video stars London May, a musician and actor who plays drums and bass in Samhain, Glenn Danzig's band between the Misfits and Danzig. In the visual May is shackled to a heavy chain and dragged through smoke, water, and brick tunnels. Argott mixes documentary-style filming with dramatic shots to turn the song's themes of struggle into a physical endurance test. As the video goes on, May stops letting the chain pull him around and begins fighting back, matching Belladonna's repeated vocal command to "Rise."
  
  The shoot was a real physical ordeal for May. "I broke my finger the very first day and had to beg them to keep shooting," he recalled. The chain was solid metal, not a lightweight prop. "I went through hell and back for Anthrax and Don Argott, and I'd happily do it all again!"