Is Phil Anselmo a Nazi? Or just an asshole?

When I was growing up, one of the bands that had a near and dear place in my heart was Pantera. That hasn't changed, nor will it ever in all honesty. They are the band I've seen the most live in concert, the band whose albums and t-shirts and stickers I'd bought in my teens. In retrospect, Pantera is probably my all-time favorite band from that era.

As the years would go by, bad things happened for the band as a whole, namely they broke up. If you were a diehard fan of the band though, you probably saw that coming. There was friction among singer Phil Anselmo and Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul, and this was known for a long time. So they split, Phil went and did his thing with his many side projects and Dime and Vinnie formed Damageplan. At least they were all still making music.

Then, in 2004, Dime was murdered on stage by an insane fan. Phil was pointed at and derided by fans because of his constant shit-talking on Dime and Vinnie in the media and at various shows (I myself heard him once shit on Damageplan at a Superjoint Ritual show in 2003, though in his defense he did follow it up by saying he loved them all).

So yeah, it hasn't been easy being a Pantera fan.

Oh, and Phil Anselmo just got busted doing a Nazi salute and saying white power.

...sigh...

Okay, I'm going to say this right now: accusations about Phil being a racist piece of shit is nothing new. In my youth, I met Phil, and I know others that have as well, and we've all come to the same conclusion: he's a fucking asshole. But is he really racist? Well...it's kind of hard to think he isn't at this point. In the past, we've all given Phil a free pass because of what all he accomplished with Pantera, but with blatant shit like this, there's no free fucking pass here.

The music that Phil crafted with Dime, Vinnie, and Rex will always be impactful and mean the world to me, but for the love of fucking Satan, fuck Phil right up his fucking ass.

Now, one more thing: metal fans, and Pantera fans especially, usually get associated with being racist fucks. As a metalhead myself (well, not as much as I used to be, but still) I can wholeheartedly say that not all of us are racist fuckheads. Granted there are quite a bit, that's for sure, but not all of us are, and we shouldn't have ever given Phil a free pass over this shit to begin with.

I do believe that Phil is definitely unhinged (he was declared technically dead once or twice back in the day due to his drug use) and he's at that point where he literally gives no fucks about anything at all, and as much as I want to give him the benefit of the doubt about his excuse why he did it (he claims it was an inside joke due to there being the presence and consumption of white wine back stage), I don't think I can.

So hey, Phil, fuck on off and go home with that shit. And fucking hell, get your shit together. The fact that you're still alive and Dime isn't illustrates how fucked up the world is.

25 Years of "Cowboys From Hell"

25 years ago, an album was dropped upon the world that changed the metal scene forever…yes, forever. That album? Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell”. While it wasn’t their first recorded material to see the light of day, this was their major label debut, and it became a surprise hit in the process.

“Cowboys From Hell” contained numerous heavy, yet somehow surprisingly catchy, songs that combined elements from Pantera’s glam-rock roots with much heavier rhythms. The opening title track? Fucking classic. “Cemetery Gates”? Also fucking classic (and the very first Pantera song I ever heard in my youth). “Domination”? One of the band’s most notable songs with an insane drum performance that made Vinnie Paul one of the all time kings of thrash metal drumming.

Phil Anselmo demonstrated impressive vocal range on “Cowboys From Hell”, managing to hit high notes that he could rarely hit in the years to come (then again, this was before he murdered his voice with the years of drinking, smoking, and drugs), along with the shredding guitar work of the late, great Dimebag (then called “Diamond”) Darrell. Rex Brown’s pumping bass lines and Vinnie Paul’s aforementioned drum assaults all combined to let the world know that metal music was phasing out of the glam-rock era, and evolving into something new and heavier with little to no compromises.

That in itself is the legacy of Pantera as a whole. They never compromised in terms of what was “hot” at the times they released their five studio albums. Though 1992’s “Vulgar Display of Power” and 1994’s “Far Beyond Driven” I feel are better all-around albums than “Cowboys From Hell”, it doesn’t negate the fact that this was the album that announced to the world that Pantera was here to do something a little different, and helped forge a legacy that just can’t be fucked with.

Now do yourself a favor: go listen to “Cowboys From Hell” from beginning to end. Maybe it’ll be the first time in a long time, maybe it’ll be the first time period. Either way, go do it.

Thank me later.

Nine Years Without Dimebag Darrell

Nine years ago today we lost a modern day legend. Dimebag Darrell Abbot was senselessly taken from us far too soon in an event that shook the heavy metal community. I was 20 years old and had just come home from class at the local community college I was going to at the time when I logged on to the internet and the first thing I see is a front page news article that said the following:

"HEAVY METAL GUITARIST SHOT DEAD AT CONCERT"

The picture under the headline was of Dimebag, and before I could even click to read the rest of it, I felt my heart sink. I felt tears start to drop down my cheeks. I couldn't believe what the fuck I was reading...and I hadn't even clicked on the link yet to read the whole story.

We all know what happened to Dimebag. We all know how tragic and senseless it all was and all the ramifications that came from it as time went on. What I want to talk about here is what Dimebag Darrell meant to me.

In my youth, I was a devoted metal head. Most of the crowd I ran with were metal heads as well, although they were more into Korn and Limp Bizkit than Megadeth and Slayer like I was (granted I guess I indulged a bit in the "nu-metal" wave that was escalatingly popular back then, just to be a poser douche I guess in retrospect), but above nearly all the metal bands I loved, I loved none more than Pantera. There was so much to love about Pantera that really spoke to me personally: Phil Anselmo's angst-ridden lyrics, the ballsy and dark subject matter, and of course those shredding, extreme, cock fucking your ear guitar solos that helped set Pantera apart from most of the rest of the pack. Their music spoke to me, and I loved them so fucking much.

I had gotten to see Pantera five times in concert before their breakup. At one of those shows I got to meet Dimebag in person. I was a teenager. He gave me a beer. From that point forward he was my favorite in the whole world.

Besides that, it was Dimebag's manner and how he presented himself to the fans and to others. He never came off with that "rockstar" attitude where by the end of talking to him you thought that he was a total ass hole. He was just one of the guys. He never let success and all the admiration he had received over the years get to his head. Dimebag (and generally speaking most of Pantera) treated their fans wonderfully. Always happy to sign autographs. Always smiling. Always having the time of his life on stage like he was a kid all over again.

That was Dimebag Darrell.

The events that led to Dime's death make his untimely death all the more tragic. The heavy metal community has never been the same since, and in all honesty it never really will be ever again. That's how beloved and revered Dime was, and just how unforgettable he ended up proving to be, as an artist and a person.

Nine years gone Dime, and we all still miss you madly.

Cannibal Holocaust: The Myth, The Legend, The Dog Turd...

During this lovely October month, after compiling lists of my favorite underrated and essential horror films alike, I noticed that some feedback I had gotten involved a nasty little exploitation film that is the absolute definition of a "cult" film, just because of all the controversy it has garnered from the day it was filmed.

The film I'm talking about is "Cannibal Holocaust".

I was a teenager when I first about this film, which was first brought to my attention by Pantera and Down vocalist Phil Anselmo who frequently referenced it on Pantera's DVD as well as some lyrics when he was with Viking Crown. I became interested and immediately scoured the internet, which in 2000 wasn't nearly as massive and information filled as it is today, and managed to find some information out about it that really drew my interest...

Banned in 50 countries

So controversial that its director was sent to prison

The most violent and disgusting horror film ever conceived

And so on and so forth. My interest was quite peaked, and only a couple years later did I finally manage to track down an uncut VHS tape of the 1980 film that I had to have imported over here. And like that, I watched it...and the end results weren't pretty. When I say that however, I'm talking about the film itself...looking back on it now, it's dreadfully overrated.

Storyline wise, the plot revolves around an American anthropologist who travels to the South American jungle after a documentary film crew had disappeared. He recovers a reel of their footage, and soon learns the truth that this crew terrorized, tortured, raped, and murdered the cannibal natives in an effort to stage and sensationalize their documentary film...but never got the chance to because they all get what they deserve.

For starters, the reason that it has been banned in so many countries (many of which have lifted said ban) is not because of its violent content, but for the fact that it actually contains footage of animal cruelty and animal killing. A turtle, monkey, snake, and more so are all slaughtered before the camera, only because director Ruggero Deodato and his film crew were so deep in the amazon jungle without restrictions that he felt he could do just about anything he wanted. Deodato had desired to direct a cannibal film that satired the lengths the media goes to in presenting violent content to its audience, and wound up helping create the legend that goes along with his ultra-violent vision.

Upon the film's first cut and viewing, Deodato found himself arrested and charged with making a snuff movie. The deaths that take place in "Cannibal Holocaust" were so realistic that people thought Deodato actually had these people murdered. That in itself only adds to the "I have to see this for myself" factor of this film. In the end, Deodato would be cleared after presenting all of the actors as still alive, and even staged some effects shots and stunts to prove that it was all in fact fake.

With all that being said, on to the film itself. For the most part, after getting through Deodato's somewhat heavyhanded (though he denies it) approach to pointing the finger at the media, he doesn't make things easy to watch. The film is brutal and unforgiving in its content of murder, cannibalism, rape, and overall just plain cruelty. Even now at 26 and as cynical a gorehound as I've become, I have a hard time watching this thing all the way through. It isn't so much the gore that gets to me, it's just the nihlistic and cruel tone. It's practically pure sadism, which is the one thing I detest about all the torture horror flicks of today like the "Saw" series, and as much as I love horror and gore and all that nasty stuff, sadism just isn't my thing. Plus the acting and dubbing are occasionally atrocious, and Deodato's film technique is just...well...not very talented. Plus, seeing animals get slaughtered? Never more thankful for a fast-forward button in all my life. Needless to say, "Cannibal Holocaust" isn't just a horror film you can have fun with a couple beers to, but it does have its own philosophy to it, which is much more than nearly any horror film around today can offer.

Though "Cannibal Holocaust" may not have the household name of many other films of its ilk despite its somewhat nigh-legendary status, its effect on horror films today can still be seen. The whole handheld camera-POV-style of horror made popular by "The Blair Witch Project"? Thank "Cannibal Holocaust" for that. Without it, we wouldn't have "Blair Witch", or "Cloverfield", or "Diary of the Dead", or even my beloved "The Last Broadcast". This was the movie that set the stage for all of that and more, including all the generic torture flicks that are all the rage today as well.

So with October coming to a close, I fucking dare you to watch "Cannibal Holocaust" if you can get your mitts on it. A couple years back it finally made its way to uncut DVD form, and can still be found online. Watch it if you dare...



Happy Halloween!