The guys from the thrash metal band Anthrax are getting pretty tired of all the questions.

After all, when the New York group thought up its name, they were still in their teens – and anthrax was a fairly obscure disease.

It’s not their fault that their name has become an emblem for the country’s darkest fears.

“We just thought it sounded cool – we had no idea that all these years later, there would be these evil idiots out there f–ing with people,” says Charlie Benante, 37, guitarist, drummer and songwriter for the band.

“We were 16, 17, got the name out of a book, and it just stuck.”

And the band never seriously considered changing it, even though the guys recently joked that they would soon be calling themselves “Basket Full of Puppies.”

“We said to ourselves, if this thing becomes an epidemic, then it’s out of our hands. Obviously, we wouldn’t even want the name if that happened. Fortunately, it seems to be dying down now,” says Benante.

On Wednesday night, Anthrax will take the stage at Hammerstein Ballroom at a sold-out concert, the proceeds of which will go to the relatives of cops and firefighters who died in the World Trade Center attack.

The men of Anthrax – Benante and Joey Belladonna, Frank Bello, John Bush, Scott Ian and David Spitz – will be bringing the noise with the same head-banging style that has made them one of the more enduring acts in heavy metal.