I tried to take heavy metal... and balled it up and chopped it in half and really tried to create a new form of energy. I really tried to re-shape extreme music as I see it through my eyes.
Phil AnselmoI won't lie to you and make you believe what's evil, is making love, and making friends, and meeting God your own way... the RIGHT way.
Phil AnselmoDown is an incredibly important band to me. And there's one other project that may be a little tough for people to understand - it's not sonically heavy, but subject-wise it's absolutely heavy. It's a band that I've been in for many, many yearsm and I've just been waiting for the right itme, and boy, it sure is the right time. So, yeah, you will hear music from Philip Anselmo again, and it ain't gonna be nothing nice.
Phil AnselmoCommunication between band-mates is imperative. Communication is the key to any healthy relationship. If I need to be checked, I expect to hear it put in plain words what my faults are, and give my band-mates the ultimate consideration by shutting up and listening, then acting on the advice given. Same goes for anyone else in any band.
Phil AnselmoI guess I've never been introduced properly to Pink Floyd. I know they're great, don't get me wrong. Excellent, excellent musicians; great band; awesome harmony; great song writers; I just don't know anything besides, I guess, the popular songs on the radio.
Phil AnselmoI am the type that cannot stay put in living in the past and solely in the past. It's not healthy and it doesn't feel right.
Phil AnselmoMusic is there for us to explore. To intentionally limit yourself to one, two, or three genres is limitation at its worst. Music is huge; its a gigantic history lesson, and if you are true music fan or a musician, you should explore it. Its all right there in front of us.
Phil AnselmoTo do an extreme metal record is something that is well within my capacity as a musician to write stuff out of the box, write stuff that's probably more extreme than the band I'm in at the present time, and it's something that needs to come out of me one way or another.
Phil AnselmoI think music is a big, big wide world, and I am voyager on this particular ship in this sea of wild music, and I'm gonna dive in and find as many fish as I can and catch them all. I love music.
Phil AnselmoYou can only exist as far as your mind will allow you to exist, and I think chronic pain will stop time dead in its tracks. You feel like you're the only one, and how unfair it is, and a million different feel-sorry-for-yourself type feelings.
Phil AnselmoSpeaking of stage freight. I was terrified! It was in NOLA at an all ages show. I was wearing Jeans, a Van Halen t-shirt, and a bandana on my neck. Once I gripped that microphone stand, I did not let go! I plugged my microphone into a guitar FX pedal. Then at the end of the a Black Sabbath song we were covering, I hit the guitar pedal. It was horrific!
Phil AnselmoYou gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.
Phil AnselmoI'm a bad pessimist. I don't think about how successful any record I've ever done is going to do before it came out.
Phil AnselmoWith this LP we were all very clear on the approach we wanted to take, which was to do something heavy, but also experiment with a lot of other things we really like.
Phil AnselmoI've heard too many times where people say that I'm this ultra-serious guy. In truth, I've got an extremely absurd sense of humor. I thrive on the absurd - I love it.
Phil AnselmoThere's always something going on, but thank goodness these days it's with a clear head, which helps me massively.
Phil AnselmoIn my better sense of mind, I know that Im far from alone and far from the worst, and the earth keeps spinning. Everything keeps moving, with or without me.
Phil AnselmoI wasn't that wild about that. I told them basically if they were really going to want to bring back heavy metal to a program on MTV, then they are really going to have to get in touch with what real heavy metal is.
Phil AnselmoI don't care at all about the mainstream; I don't care about popularity contests; I don't care about who's got the biggest-selling album; and I don't care about glossy production.
Phil AnselmoPantera revolutionized the sound and the approach to heavy metal. It's been regurgitated. Once you up the production on a product and not just the playing but the actual production, then it's going to up the ante.
Phil AnselmoYou're always going to have detractors, and you're always going to have people who love you, and that's how it's perfectly balanced and the world spins on.
Phil AnselmoI'm glowing in the dark with my studio tan. I've been in a cave of music for months and months and months.
Phil AnselmoWe, PANTERA, had the greatest, the most intense, dedicated fans I've ever seen in my ******* life. And I really hope with all my heart that one day, people - especially our fans and my friends - can see clearly enough to think for themselves and really realize that I have nothing but love for them. I've just been going through personal hell since December. Once again, it's very hard to talk about, man. You know, my heart is in a thousand pieces a day.
Phil Anselmo