Phil Anselmo

“And it seems to be today, image is a real important thing once again.”

“I wake up, and I'll just start reading and trying to brace myself for the rest of the day, and all the while I'm doing that, I'm kicking myself mentally.”

“You have certain expressions when you write music, a lot of different emotions, a lot of different feelings.”

“The success that Pantera had, I could have never, ever forecasted or predicted, and I always felt a responsibility to try to pay even a bit of it forward.”

“You 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.”

“There's always something going on, but thank goodness these days it's with a clear head, which helps me massively.”

“Singing and playing have always gone hand-in-hand with me. I love 'em both equally.”

“Everyone's gonna have their opinion, everyone's gonna have their favorite bands. The best way I can describe it is music is like food, either you love it, hate it, or are indifferent about it. Or you grow up and acquire a taste for it.”

“Knowing what you're up against is part of the strength of writing something that is even, I guess, considered halfway original, knowing what's out there to begin with.”

“To 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.”

“I 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.”