Philip H. Anselmo and the Illegals at the Gramercy Theatre

Phil Anselmo was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 30, 1968, and is best known as the former lead singer of the ground-breaking heavy metal band Pantera. He was actually the band’s fourth lead vocalist, but it was during his term that the band reached its greatest success. He joined the band in 1986 and remained until its breakup in 2003; other members of the band have blamed him for the band’s demise and even indirectly for the assassination of his former band-mate, guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott. Before, during and after Pantera, Anselmo fronted a countless number of hardcore punk and metal bands, the most successful being the metal band Down, which he helped form in 1991. Anselmo’s most recent project is Philip H. Anselmo and the Illegals; this year the band has released an album, Walk through Exits Only, and a split EP, War of the Gargantuas (with Warbeast).

Anselmo’s great passion for underground and extreme metal was evident at the Gramercy Theatre tonight. If his fans were looking for the next Pantera, this was not on tonight’s menu. Hardcore hooks barely held the framework of a song together as Anselmo grunted and growled and the band pounded away with scraping riffs and sometimes atonal discordance that were challenging to get a firm grip on. For those in the audience who simply wanted to bang their heads or mosh in the pit, Anselmo and company adequately provided both the impetus and the soundtrack. For those who wanted to hear great new metal songs, the show was lacking. Perhaps those who knew the band’s recorded work were able to hang on for the ride, but for us newbies, the concert was fast, furious and vacuous. With just three musicians and a vocalist on stage, it should have been easier to hear the singer and the individual instruments. The music was a brutal wall of jackhammer sound that was less cohesion and more a bold wave of a rallying flag for the extreme metal community; the message of “look how wild we can get” successfully registered as loud and as proud as possible.