Metal Anarchy

Phil Anselmo‘s Superjoint and Down bandmate Jimmy Bower was recently interviewed by Clrvynt.com, and was asked about Anselmo‘s nazi salute and white power chant at Dimebash. Anselmo faced tons of backlash for the incident, and you can see Bower’s thoughts on it below.

Bower said the following:

“When it happened, knowing Phil and our extremely dark sense of humor, I blew it off as him being stupid. Then Robb Flynn put the video up saying how his feelings were hurt, and the people things were starting to say made me understand that what he said was not cool and not funny, even in a joking sense, and it did hurt people’s feelings. It was really weird because it honestly wasn’t a big deal to me, just because I know how Phil is.

Dude, we joke about stupid shit. The bullshit that we come up with and talk about among friends … I guess the lesson learned is that you can’t do that around other people. I mean, we were friends with [Anal Cunt’s] Seth Putnam. He was a freak, dude, as far as his sense of humor. He liked to fuck with people. But behind the scenes he was the biggest sweetheart who would give you the shirt off his back. So, I just wish people could take things with a grain of salt nowadays instead of everyone being so serious.”

He also added:

“People hit Phil pretty hard over it, but knowing him as he really is, part of me thought it was unfair. Part of me wanted to try to explain to people that Phil’s not like this. You can’t be racist if you’re from New Orleans. There’s so many different cultures here; you just can’t do it. And you’re raised to understand that. I think [the Dimebash incident] was getting linked to other times in his life, when he was younger, and it was just really unfortunate. I think he did the right thing by apologizing sincerely.”

He also commented when asked if Down faced backlash when they returned to the stage:

“Not at all. Like I said, Phil did something wrong and he apologized for it, but he got dragged through the wringer a lot more than your average person would’ve. That being said, people still love Phil for his talents. It’s just really weird, dude. Back to that humor thing — you can’t write anything sarcastic on social media without getting attacked. Either the world is really changing or we’re getting really old. To me, we’re just a bunch old dudes sitting around making stupid jokes. It kinda comes with old age, like gray hair.”

Head to Clrvynt.com to read the full interview.