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Pantera ~ Racism in Metal |
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Bosh66 
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 Topic: Pantera ~ Racism in MetalPosted: 01 Feb 2016 at 5:49am |
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Off the back of Pantera's Philip Anselmo's continued <FONT color=#cccccc><FONT face=Arial>Sieg Heil[/COLOR] saluting [/COLOR]and his shouting out of "White Power" at the end of a set on Dimebash, the wider metal community has started to kick back.
See Robb Flynn of Machine Head's video embedded in this newspaper piece here - I'm sure we have some members who have some sympathy for Anselmo's views, we're a wide community. Most folk I'm guessing have more integrity, more intelligence to subscribe to these far-right positions. No apologies from me if you're offended by that. What worries me is not the existence of marginal / niche nazi bands that no-one outside of those "clubs" listen to. It's the existence of neo-nazi sentiments being expressed by some of the bigger names in metal that worries me. Do we have a problem or is it just a couple of bad apples in the apple cart? Edited by Bosh66 - 01 Feb 2016 at 6:03am |
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adg211288
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 6:14am |
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This recent incident isn't the first time I've seen Anselmo accused of such. I distinctly remember last time he was called out that he was "highly fucking offended" by the accusations. Didn't really buy it then and still don't. I enjoy Pantera, but Phil has never struck me as a particularly likable individual.
As to whether it's a problem or not, IMO all that neo-nazi stuff is always a problem regardless of who does it. I don't think underground bands should face less scrutiny than Anselmo, though granted a bigger name like him presents more of a direct problem. Far as I know Pantera is still a major gateway band for a lot of kids getting into metal and the last thing we need is kids thinking this sort of shit is OK.
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Bosh66
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 7:03am |
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You're right. I guess the point I was trying clumsily to make was that impressionable people will really only come across bands in the RAC / neo-nazi movement by going looking for them, either on this site or others. Pantera though presents a much bigger threat to normalising these kinds of opinions.
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UMUR
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 8:47am |
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Well you won´t find opinions like that directly in their music. Phil is a drunk idiot (he always seems like he is drunk these days), who said something stupid. It probably sounded funny in his drunken mind, and he forgot to think of the consequences, which is often the case with drunk people (been there myself many times. Most famously when I ran naked through the city, urinating on any church I could find. Those were the days
 ). I understand why people are upset and question his motives, but personally I just think he´s drunk fuck, who fucked up Again. Problem is that he is famous and therefore has a responsibility that he doesn´t live up to, when acting like this.
...and I´m not trying to excuse his behaviour, because he is a grown man and should know better and booze of course isn´t an excuse either. I´m just not sure a deeper racism motive is behind this. Edited by UMUR - 01 Feb 2016 at 9:17am |
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Bosh66
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 9:30am |
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"when I ran naked through the city, urinating on any church" In Copenhagen? It was freezing the two times I've been. Fuck, you viking types must be tough
 I'm not convinced that this was just some drunken stupidity. Yes we've all been there shouting shite in a drunken haze and thinking we're the funniest person the world has ever seen. From what I've read, spouting racist stuff seems to be a long-standing pattern for Phil. If it is just stupidity, you'd think he'd have learned by now. Seems to be upsetting quite a few people with it. I haven't noticed any overtly racist sentiments in the music either, and my issue is not that he's possibly a racist or white power sympathiser. He's entitled to his own views no matter how different they may be from mine or anyone elses. It appears though that he has a long history of hinting his opinions in a very public arena, and that both brings the music he's creating into disrepute and deliberately or inadvertently creates a platform for the nonsense he's coming out with.
Edited by Bosh66 - 01 Feb 2016 at 9:32am |
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UMUR
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 9:37am |
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^well it was a nice warm summer morning. Just graduated from high school
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Unitron
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 10:41am |
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Phil Anselmo has said so many rude things in the past, so this doesn't surprise me too much. Still love the guy's vocals, but I get the feeling that he really doesn't know how to act properly at concerts and such. While I think I agree with Jonas that he was probably wasted out of his mind and thought he made a hilarious joke, that just says he shouldn't be getting drunk at concerts.
I don't care if he does happen to be white supremacist, like what has been said, everyone's entitled to their own views no matter how ugly those views are to us, but this really hurts the guy's image. It would be a shame if people were to stop listening to great bands like Pantera and Down just because of Anselmo's views. Personally, my biggest problem with this is how people are bringing Pantera into this. This issue is exclusively Anselmo, Pantera has nothing to do with this. With how people are reacting to this, I would hate to see Pantera be labeled racists when they never expressed any such views in their music as far as I've heard.
Edited by Unitron - 01 Feb 2016 at 10:44am |
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If I say fuck two more times that's forty-six fucks in this fucked up rhyme
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Bosh66
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 10:56am |
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You make a fair point. Pantera (unless I'm missing something) is not a racist band. One or more band members may or may not be racist.
Where things get difficult is the the front-man of the band appears to have a history of mouthing white power, throwing nazi salutes and making racist comments. While he's stood on a stage with the rest of the band doing this, it's Anselmo and no-one else who's implicating the rest of Pantera in this controversy. Whatever the rest of the band's views may or may not be, you can't have the lead figure doing this at a gig and expect fellow performers or the audience not to hold the band accountable. Mud sticks, whether Anselmo is a white power sympathiser or as he would probably prefer the story to be, a drunk dick who mouths off rubbish when he gets wasted. I've no idea what his personal views are, but we should be careful about excusing the shite he comes out with on stage, even if it was meant in jest. And for the record I have quite a few Pantera albums, as I'm sure most here have.
Edited by Bosh66 - 01 Feb 2016 at 11:00am |
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adg211288
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 10:57am |
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Just to be clear the point I was trying to make earlier wasn't to imply that the rest of Pantera share(d) Phil's (supposed) views or that their music was that way inclined. However that's kind of irrelevant if Anselmo shouts his mouth off (whether drunk or not is beside the point), as he's still exposing listeners, which includes kids, to those views. Remember that kids can be pretty impressionable, especially where potential idols may be concerned and they all have the Internet right at their fingertips these days...my concern is that kids will think it is cool to say and do things like Phil does.
Also with metal still largely misunderstood by the mainstream public no one needs this to give the genre and all of its artists a bad name. Which it will, as the public always latches onto the more negative aspects of anything while conveniently ignoring everything else.
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Unitron
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 11:08am |
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^That is true. Kids shouldn't be hearing this kind of shit, well nobody should, but especially not kids. I think here it's up to parents to teach their kids right from wrong and tell them to be open to asking questions about something they hear or see.
This definitely damages metal's image even more in the eyes of the mainstream public, and that's the last thing we need. Then of course people hypocritically ignore all the racism and sexism in mainstream pop and rap music, and only attack genres like metal where many bands actually bring up political and social issues.
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If I say fuck two more times that's forty-six fucks in this fucked up rhyme
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siLLy puPPy
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 11:17am |
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Phil Anselmo has always been an idiotic dick head and the luckiest thing he ever did was meet up with Dimebag and crew otherwise he would be a little obscurity in the 2nd rate punk bands of the world. While Pantera remains one of my favorite 90s metal bands it has nothing to do with his part of it. In fact other than Cowboys In Hell his vocal abilities are nothing out of the ordinary and his IQ is that of a ketchup bottle. He and Axl Rose have both proven that their hot-headed buffoonery usually trumps any modicum of responsibility that comes with being famous but i really don't think many take these guys seriously these days at least when they say stupid crap like that
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Triceratopsoil
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 12:34pm |
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I've never cared one lick about any band's politics, I usually don't even pay attention to lyrics. It's either good music or it isn't.
I don't recall Anselmo's beliefs ever showing up in their songs. I suspect he just wanted attention when he did stuff like that. If you want some more examples of controversial opinions among metal musicians, look no further than Varg Edited by Triceratopsoil - 01 Feb 2016 at 12:35pm |
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Vim Fuego
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 2:24pm |
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I've entered this discussion in several places so far, including several hours on YouTube where Rob Flynn had posted his video. Just to summarise what I've said/think on the issue:
1. This incident was racist and unacceptable. No question. 2. I've seen Anselmo incite skinheads to attack someone at a Pantera show. 3. A lot of people don't seem to understand why it's offensive, possibly because the countries where they come from have no race relation problems. 4. There are disturbing numbers of racist idiots still living in this world, trying to say white power is the same as black power. Most come from the southern states of the US and eastern Europe. I don't know if anyone here comes from those places, but it's never come across as an issue here, and I'm not saying everyone from those regions is racist. 5. There are also disturbing numbers of people blaming Rob Flynn for calling Anselmo on this! A lot of people don't want to believe one of their heroes can do any wrong. A lot have called it point scoring or politically motivated or jealousy.  Dimebag's long time girlfriend is among these.6. Anselmo's apology seemed genuine, but he's only a shadow of his former self, and came across a pathetic dribbling drunk in that video. It was very uncomfortable to watch. Personally, I think it's a pretty dumb thing to do, throwing out white power salutes. I've had more trouble in my life from white power than black power (and yes, I have encountered both. Some Maori in NZ quite understandably aligned themselves with the black power movement, although it became a major criminal gang here). I encounter casual racism a lot, living in a rural area, and I find it frustrating sometimes. I was also going to add a few bands to the site related to Anal Cunt and Seth Putnam (who Phil Anselmo has worked with more than once) which had overtly racist lyrics and artwork, just for completeness sake, but I think I'll hold off for a while. And there's others.
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adg211288
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 2:34pm |
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Wouldn't hold off on adding a band if they musically belong here. MMA doesn't have a full written policy on the issue yet, but when we do it'll be on the same lines as RYM's:
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Triceratopsoil
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 2:45pm |
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If you going to write disclaimers on artists, there are a lot of equally bad or worse themes out there (murder/snuff and rape, for instance)
I don't think it's a big issue, in that only a total idiot would assume MMA condones the actions and words of every artist included. Having a thorough database remains the most important thing for this type of website |
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Bosh66
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 3:16pm |
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Patrick makes some good points. It's far too easy to pass off these kind of views as those of a harmless drunken fool. Racism ruins life every day and pretty much everywhere across the globe. Unfortunately it's far from a historical problem.
To Adam's point though, we shouldn't avoid adding racist or any other unpleasant (that seems too soft a word) band to the database. As Colin says, we're a database and the most obnoxious metal band is still a metal band. I also kind of agree with Colin that there should be no need for a disclaimer, at least at an artist level. The biography should mention in a matter of fact way what kind of band the artist is or movements they belong to. A disclaimer at a site level though would make our position clear. |
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adg211288
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 3:18pm |
Yes that's what I think we need to put up sometime.
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Unitron
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 3:55pm |
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I agree that there should be a disclaimer in the "About MMA" section of something like that. If there was a disclaimer on the artist page of every single band that has questionable views, that could get a bit annoying and redundant. Also, sometimes it's hard to differentiate what's real and what's for shock value and/or humor. On one hand you do have neo-nazi bands, but you also have bands like Acidrodent who's lyrics I doubt are meant to be taken seriously. Edited by Unitron - 01 Feb 2016 at 3:55pm |
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If I say fuck two more times that's forty-six fucks in this fucked up rhyme
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Vim Fuego
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 9:11pm |
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I've put a disclaimer on a couple of bands which used actual Nazi imagery (I basically modified the one from RYM to fit our needs).
http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/album/throne-ov-chroronzon/asshole-sleeper-throne-ov-choronzon%28split%29 Note: This release includes Nazi imagery. We do not agree with the opinions expressed by those who created/recorded such imagery, but the purpose of this site is to document music, not to judge whether it should exist or not. The use of visual or audio material which promotes Nazism and/or National Socialism is not encouraged by this site or it's contributors, but it's existence cannot be denied. Often the best way to deal with potentially offensive philosophies and attitudes is to expose them to free and open discussion. I don't think we need to do it for everything, but something as blatant as Throne Ov Choronzon needed something. Thankfully it was limited to 31 copies... |
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siLLy puPPy
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Posted: 01 Feb 2016 at 9:38pm |
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So where are the limits here? Can we add an artist that is metal and is into kiddie rape or something? Beastiality? Sex with toasters?
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