See Robb Flynn of Machine Head's video embedded in this newspaper piece here -

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/01/metal-community-condemns-racism-phil-anselmo-nazi-salute-white-power" rel="nofollow - http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/01/metal-community-condemns-racism-phil-anselmo-nazi-salute-white-power

 

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?

 

 

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. 

 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

http://www.discogs.com/artist/495115-Vaginal-Jesus" rel="nofollow -

http://www.discogs.com/artist/495115-Vaginal-Jesus" rel="nofollow - https://www.discogs.com/artis

RYM wrote: This page has been marked by our userbase as describing content that contains Nazi/National Socialist material.  RYM does not host, sell, or distribute this material, and we do not agree with the opinions expressed by those who created/recorded it.  We have included these works in the RYM database for reference. It's our goal to document the existence of all film and music recordings, whether or not we agree with the content. We do not believe that an effective strategy in fighting these ideologies is to pretend that these recordings don't exist; in fact, it hinders those who want to speak against it by denying them a forum to educate others about the hateful content contained within the recordings.  If you are involved in recording a project marked by our users as Nazi/NSBM material and wish to refute this claim, then please submit a feedback (bottom of the page) with your contact information or an explanation and we will get in touch with you.

Yes that's what I think we need to put up sometime. 

I would never listen to neo-nazi bands either, but when you have a database that is trying to be a complete metal resource, you have to take the bad with the good.

Perhaps the fact that people don't take this kind of stuff seriously is simply because there's too much of it around us?

That's my twopenn'orth anyway.

Toaster Fucker, the new hit Grindcore band on the scene. 

I should've guessed this would be the perfect breeding ground for toaster fetishes! Actually, that toaster looks HOT! Nothing turns me on like burned bread LOL :)

Now, the real question is, would that invite those of aforementioned belief system into the site, and would the community want that?

Send me the link and I'll add 'em.

I have listened to neo-nazi bands. I've done it for research purposes. I've never, ever spent any money on them though. I feel absolutely no shame whatsoever in downloading that sort of thing without paying for it, just to see what it sounds like. One listen is usually enough and then off to the garbage can on my desktop.

For the record, most neo-nazi shit is absolutely dreadful. You can all guess how vile the lyrics are. Strangely though, the music is uniformly dreadful as well. Not a scrap of instrumental or songwriting skill shown.

For a bit of perspective, I've also been checking out most of the grindcore bands on the site as I've been updating their profiles, just to make sure they are in the right category. I don't much like some of that either.