Phil Anselmo quotes

Phil Anselmo is an American musician, best known as the lead vocalist for the heavy metal band Pantera. His powerful voice and energetic stage presence helped define the sound of modern metal. He has also worked with numerous other bands and projects within the genre. Here are 26 of his quotes:

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. (Phil Anselmo)
Pantera 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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
I'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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
With Pantera, we lived through so many trend-of-the-day situations - when grunge was huge, we were still a heavy metal band; when hip-hop started getting incorporated into metal, we stuck to our guns and remained a heavy metal band very purposefully. View quote
Phil Anselmo
I 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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
And it seems to be today, image is a real important thing once again. View quote
Phil Anselmo
At least in my life, I cannot hold onto grudges. It's a waste of energy, a waste of time. View quote
Phil Anselmo
In my better sense of mind, I know that I'm far from alone and far from the worst, and the earth keeps spinning. Everything keeps moving, with or without me. View quote
Phil Anselmo
Music is there for us to explore. To intentionally limit yourself to one, two, or three genres is limitation at its worst. Music is huge; it's a gigantic history lesson, and if you are true music fan or a musician, you should explore it. It's all right there in front of us. View quote
Phil Anselmo
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. (Phil Anselmo)
I'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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
With 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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
You'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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
We definitely have a hardcore following. View quote
Phil Anselmo
To me, I'm for a band whose forefront is the music. View quote
Phil Anselmo
I 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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
I'm glowing in the dark with my studio tan. I've been in a cave of music for months and months and months. View quote
Phil Anselmo
There's always something going on, but thank goodness these days it's with a clear head, which helps me massively. View quote
Phil Anselmo
You 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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
Communication 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 Anselmo)
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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
I 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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
I 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. View quote
Phil Anselmo
There it is again. Image. Once again. I get really tired of it quick. View quote
Phil Anselmo

Phil Anselmo

Phil Anselmo - Image
Photo: Llann Wé², CC BY-SA 3.0
Occupation: American Musician
Born: June 30, 1968
Quotes count: 26