The Latest in the Pantera Saga


Well, this story just keeps getting better and better, I guess you could say...

For the record, if I had to choose, I'd have to take the brothers' side in this whole mess, in that I think Phil Anselmo is pretty much a cock, anymore... thinking he's some super-duper-god, or something... He might have been at one time (back in about 1996), but he's gone and totally fucked over the people that helped make him who he was, acted like a dick in public about it, pretending like he's the one that got shut out of Pantera, pissed his marriage away, treated fans like they are worhtless (again, more of the very people that helped to make him so famous in the first place), pretending that he doesn't need anything or anyone but the needle... In the grand scheme of things, though, it's a pretty sad end (well, Reinventing the Steel aside - a pretty sad affair of its own) to an otherwise great band, that just about singlehandedly kept "heavy metal" alive through the advent of boy bands, cheesy hip-hop, grunge, college rock, and into the early beginnings of that "emo" complete shit...

If you believe Dime and Vinnie, they would have liked to have kept Pantera together, but former singer Phil Anselmo was only interested in doing his fifty side projects, apparently... and when meeting after meeting went off without Anselmo giving the brothers any respect by even following through, they basically said "fuck him, and fuck Pantera," and decided it was time to do their own thing... the result is the band Damageplan.

Anselmo had this to say in a recent interview when asked if he could work out the problem with the brothers:

"Man, it's not really my thing. Some people can say I'm the one that started all these side bands. But look, I'm a fuckin' musician. To limit yourself to one fucking band and one form of music to me is just treading shallow water. You need to plunge in fucking deep. There's a lot of different forms of heavy music itself, and it doesn't all need some form of heavy guitar. I've played all kinds of music. That's just how I am and that's just what I do. I'm not the one that fuckin' totally fuckin' wanted to end the name or the working relationship with PANTERA. That was those other guys. They wanted to end it, OK. Who am I to argue besides Philip Anselmo."

...to which Dimebag (in an interview with "The Metal Show" in Cleveland) replied:

"I'll just say this... Well, you can call it 'shallow', if that's what he wants to call it. What I call it is fuckin' thoroughly full, 1000 percent blood-and-heart-and-fucking-soul, from where me and Vinnie were coming from. 'Cause when you put as much into PANTERA as me and Vinnie did, you ain't got no time to go fuckin' jack off on no side fuckin' band, OK?! That's where we're coming from. And we ain't the ones that took off and left everybody hanging. And he did NOT communicate with us. Dude, we had fuckin' meetings set up... I mean, we even... At the end of the rope, after trying to hook up conference call after conference call, him blowing us off - in-between blowing us off, he'd go out and play shows, and people would call us and go, 'Man, he's doing it again. He said Dime fuckin' sucks and Vinnie's...' Whatever, all this ridiculous shit, for no good reason. It finally came to a head where we were talking to the record company, just trying to get cut loose to move forward and do a new band, and we even offered to prove to them that, 'Look, man, we'll do a meeting with you in your office' (Sylvia Rhone's office, the head of Elektra Records) 'We'll do a meeting with you to and we'll sit down with these cats and do our goddamn very best to iron everything out, whatever the hell the problem is.' You know, I've got no fuckin' problem - I'll sit down with them fuckin' cats and look them right in the eye and say, 'What is the hang-up, man?' And he blew that off - he would not do it. And then next thing you know, here comes his next SUPERJOINT record. And in interviews… That's [the story] he gave that one time. Like Vinnie says, he's not giving the same answer every time, so you've gotta wonder about somebody like that. That don't mean somebody is telling you exactly 100 percent the fuckin' truth."

Questions also arose about Anselmo's (alleged) drug problem (which has also recently cost him his marriage), to which the brothers replied:

The Metal Show: Is that the Phil that you guys knew, though?

Vinnie: "No, that's the dope-fucked Phil, how's that? ...People have been covering up and hiding the truth behind what's going on with that dude for way too long. When it started out, he really had a lot of fun taking potshots at us. And when he realized his audience was dwindling and dwindling and dwindling and he was playing to fewer and fewer people, right at the very end of his tour he started a whole new story, 'Man, I love those guys. I wish them the best of luck.' Bull-fuckin'-shit - that's all I have to say... People wanna question if somebody's high or not - you can either tell by their actions or not. People don't come in the room and just tie off and say, 'Watch out guys, I'm gonna shoot up right now. Hold on for a minute.' You don't see it. It's a secretive kind of thing that goes on."

Dimebag: "[in another person's voice] 'Man he was drunk.' That ain't fuckin' booze, dude, you know?! Give me a fuckin' break."

NOTE: and I thought I said "fuck," a lot...
Well, it's becoming quite obvious that there's no love lost for Anselmo... and that he's got some issues he needs to deal with (although, in regards to the brothers, I can say from past experience that being a raging pothead isn't what I'd call a "great life," either, but then again, I wasn't ever a "god-awfully wealthy pothead")... Meanwhile, Phil will go on with his fifty bands, spreading himself thinner than that prepackaged meat you buy at the grocery... and in my opinion, the only "side project" he's ever done that's worth a shit (and I've heard about six or seven different things he's been doing over the past few years - I personallly think Superjoint Ritual blows & is, like, a cheap Slayer ripoff or something... just being heavy for heavy's sake... I sold my first CD about a week after I got it, and could hardly bear the second one) was Down, but he went and fucked that over, too...

Good luck to the brothers Abbott in their new endeavors with Damageplan, and good luck to Phil Anselmo in getting his shit straight, or at least getting his story straight, anyway... I hope that in any case, all the shitslinging can come to an end and people can get on and just play some good music and not worry about what their ex-singer or ex-guitarist and ex-drummer say about them... it will be a better day...

You can hear the entire 25-minute interview with Dime and Vinnie HERE


Listening to: The Cult - "Sonic Temple" (1989)