New Metal Hammer Op-Ed On Phil Anselmo ‘Whitewashing’ His Legacy With Pantera Reunion Stirs Up The Metal Community:

Metal Hammer has issued an op-ed on PANTERA’s troubled vocalist Phil Anselmo, as news has dropped that the Abbott estate wants the racist outburst he made rectified by donating money and cutting a future ad that speaks out against “racial profiling”. Anselmo was expected to be fired by PANTERA for the controversy that led to cancelled gigs in Germany and other countries. The word is that he has accepted the punishment from the Abbott estate and must fulfill their wishes to make a large charitable donate to remain the band’s singer moving forward into 2024.

Here is an excerpt from the piece:

You cannot understate the significance Pantera had within 90s metal. While traditionally inclined heaviness faced overthrow from grunge and nu metal, the Texan powerhouse were the only big American band to keep the faith. Their 1992 magnum opus Vulgar Display Of Power ensured that shouting vocals and immense solos maintained a place in hard rock’s musical language, before followup Far Beyond Driven pushed those extreme sounds to the top of the US album charts.

In 2023, though, it’s inordinately difficult, as a journalist, to sing the praises of Pantera.

January 22, 2016, remains one of the blackest days in modern metal history. Then-former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo deciding to get onstage, throw a Nazi salute and scream “White power!” was not only a heinous act in its own right; it then bogged the scene down in years of in-fighting and excuses over what should be a universal stance by now: Nazism is bad. That metalheads couldn’t agree to condemn Anselmo for his actions (nor identify that it was not a one-off excusable as a dumb mistake) represents the very worst of this community.