Jason Wellwood of Hellbound.ca recently conducted an interview with Philip Anselmo (Down, Pantera, Superjoint Ritual). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Hellbound.ca: Busy day for you?
Philip Anselmo: It's going to be, starting with you and going from here and I'll be in the studio until late tonight.
Is that a typical day for you, do a little bit of press and then hit the studio for the rest of the day?
It depends on the typicality of it all. Yes, I'm in the studio quite a bit and yes, I do press quite often. Actually to tell you the truth, it's very special, because I'm doing a solo record right now and I'm at the half way point of getting the drum tracks laid.
So the songs are all written for the solo record?
I'd been demoing, I guess about a year with this one kid on drums, just a local guy, a session guy. So I had, the basic skeletons for these songs sort of in place. You know, not married to one particular part or another. Then I did a whole lot of fine-tuning and I found a drummer that I wanted to jam with: the kid from Warbeast (Joe Gonzalez), an excellent drummer, a great, great, great drummer. He does play thrash metal in Warbeast but that doesn't limit him from all spectrums of heavy metal. He's very flexible and diverse, so it's awesome. I get the best of both hands and feet, if you will, out of a drummer.
Will you be handling the rest of the parts of the album? Playing guitar, singing and playing bass as well?
I'd say about 99%, for sure. I might have a couple of guys do some leads. I'm nothing great at leads, I'm kind of creative with themes but as a lead guitar player I'm pretty God-awful! Depending on the music, you know, I'm thinking this particular project might call for someone with a little more lead guitar talent.
It's nice to hear about a solo record coming out that's actually a solo record and not someone throwing their vocals over someone else's work.
Fuckin' A, man! Yeah, you know, the supergroup thing has been beaten to death in the ground. I didn't want to just assemble this band, another band again, ala Superjoint, ala Down, ala something I've done before. So, like you said, total solo record. I wish I could play drums though, I tell you that! But this kid is fucking insanely good, I would never aspire to be as good as this kid. He's fucking pretty incredible.
Any idea at this point when the album will be released?
See, I don't want to put a date on anything like that because there is still a lot of work to be done and then on top of that I got a lot of work in between which involves Down, which involves a lot of my bands here at Housecore [Records, Anselmo's record label].
Read the entire interview at Hellbound.ca.
