Superjoint and ex-pantera's Phil Anselmo

By Jay Oakley

I'm sitting here with Phil Anselmo from, of course, Pantera, Down and Superjoint. How are you, man?

Excellent! How are you?

I'm doing really well. So, you're actually out here in New Jersey at Monster Mania Con.

I am.

It's the first day of a three day weekend and how are you enjoying it so far?

I'm loving it, man! I've been doing these things all freaking year and they're awesome. It's fantastic to meet fantastic people so I'm right in my element.

So you have a new Superjoint album coming out, Caught Up In The Gears Of Application.

I do.

I'd love for you to talk about that. How's it going so far and when's it due out if you're allowed to tell us?

It's been done for a year. [Laughs] I've been sitting on it. November 11th would be the street date for the USA and since figuring I'm in six hundred and sixty-six different bands each band kind of has to have its own assignment attached to it. What we try to do is be as true as possible to what Superjoint "sounds" like and the attitude attached to it. I will say, probably, that it sounds like Superjoint and it is a massive, massive, massive, elongated bird finger to everything that needs to be flipped off and that's about all I've got to say about that.

Yes sir. Since you said that you've been sitting on it for a while what was the cause of that? Is this just the best time?

No, man! I've been doing all kinds of stuff. It's just, we finished up and then the next thing I know another project popped up and that was whatever and then out of no where I got approached by my brother John Jarvis to do this Scour band. It was like two emails and the next thing I know I'm in a band and they sent me five tracks and I just scribbled out some lyrics pretty quickly, went next door to the studio, belted it out in an afternoon, sent it back to him and they dug it. I was pleased with it if, not even, slightly indifferent towards it because, to me, it was just fun to do. People like the shit! So, it was like, "Wow!" "Ooh baby, baby, It's a wild world." to quote Cat Stevens but it's amazing. Stuff you take dead serious and you work really hard on and take six months to fucking do, people will be like, "This sucks! Could've done better. Not sure how I feel about this." Ya know, every negative thing but shit that you don't really fucking put, I guess, controlled effort into, they love it so it's like, "Alright, I give up at this point. Fuck everybody, I'm just going to make music for me and that's that and fucking whoever likes it likes it, whoever fucking hates it, choke on my fucking dick. I don't give a fuck."

Leading up to the release of the new record, do you have any dates for shows set?

We have a show on November 12th. But, it's like, they hand me a mic and say, "Start screaming." That's all I know and I'm good to go. Fuck it, I'll do it.

I like to talk a little history but back in the days with Pantera were there any particular videos that you really enjoyed making and shooting?

No. The only video I think I had fun making was "Witchtripper" with Down (Down IV - Part 1) that was a fun video to make because it was absolute and utter bullshit and Superjoint back in the day from the first record (Use Once And Destroy) those were fun to do but Pantera was like, God, take after take after take after take. It was like shooting this mini-movie for a five minute song. It was that high dollar production that I don't really give four fucks and a you about.

The early videos from Cowboys From Hell were shot live weren't they?

Well, you've got to do editing and stuff like that but yeah we did have a live crowd and that was fun. But, that was also a tremendous beating on that audience, man. Those were the fantastic days before this shit called the internet. When there was this shit called, real circle pits and real audience response without some asshole holding a phone in the air, filming the show like he's going to re-live it and all they're doing is re-posting it on YouTube. "Look at what I got first!" It's like a one up gamesmanship, It's like so fucking, absolutely boring. I prefer the days of audience participation. Back before lawsuits and all that shit started creeping in. Back before extreme popularity, as a matter of fact, that's pretty much what ran me out of Pantera was the lack of intimacy, the people thinking that because your band's popular you got X amount of dollars. The band started getting sued because our shows couldn't be the same. I used to be able to say, "Our stage is your stage, we're Pantera...Boom!" and it was on and motherfuckers were stage-diving immediately and that was back in the day when people knew educate out in the audience. You catch the stage-diver, you help them down. If someone falls down in the pit, you pick them up. The pit is not a pushing contest, it was a scene, it was something incredible and New York City, I can't give enough credit for building it. DC, all the Midwest all the way through that east coast and Boston. All those motherfucking places rubbed off on New Orleans and I got to live the New Orleans and the Texas connection and I love the underground bands back then and for God sakes there were great local shows to go to and fly home to. I miss those days terribly.

Absolutely. Phil, thank you so much. I don't want to hold up your fans and I appreciate you taking a couple of minutes to talk about what you've got coming up.

Yeah, man. I want to send every once and fiber of love I have received over the last months to the greatest fans on the fucking face of the fucking earth. I love you so much.