PHILIP ANSELMO: Why I Loathe Guns

Former PANTERA and current SUPERJOINT and DOWN singer Philip Anselmo was interviewed on a recent episode of "Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon". You can now listen to the hour-long chat in the YouTube clip below.

Speaking about political division in the United States and the tendencies of people to isolate themselves within their ideological bubbles, Anselmo said: "The media, on a political level, [is] leaning so hard left or so hard right that you've gotta look at both sides to even feel where the moral compass should lie or a free-thinking mind should lie.

"I think that if I had to be stuck on some political scale, I would be easily on the left, and probably surprisingly so on the left on a lot of topics," he revealed. "Like gun control or something like that. I loathe guns and I loathe war, and there's many reasons [for that]. It was instilled in me [from when I was] a young boy. Because I grew up with causalties of [the] Vietnam [war] in my house, in my first memories of childhood. So I had the Vietnam war and all of its horrors explained to me as a young child in his earliest memories. So I'm not a gun guy. I realize America's gun problem is impossible to roll back. But would it be better if there were less guns on the street? You're fucking-A right. So, anyway, that's just one little thing.

"To me, if the wings are hard left and hard right, they're the same bird, man — that's the same bird to me," he continued. "I don't want either one. They're both authoritarian and ridiculous in their outlooks.

"I guess the point I'm getting at is even the news that we get is partisan — it's leaned towards one way or the other, and it's maddening, man.

"When are we gonna get back to the truth? When are we gonna get back to thicker skin and approaching topics of the truth that might be uncomfortable, but still we can find common ground within this framework called truth instead of tiptoeing on eggshells and shit?

"I think what the hard left does with trying to put everybody in a box… And so does the hard right — fuck them too, man! If skin color is any graph or any measure of anything, then count me out — count me out of that stupid shit."

Anselmo added: "To me, the arguments from the hard left and the hard right are an insult to our collective intelligence at this point. I think that we should be discussing far more advanced topics than shit that happened hundreds of years ago, if not 50 years ago, if not 10 years ago.

"As individuals, I think that we need to stay staunch in our individuality and learn how to stand on our own two fucking legs before we can offer help to anyone else. We need to worry about ourselves more than some giant collection of people with the same politics.

"I find the whole thing repugnant, I find the whole thing ridiculous."

Philip's solo project, PHILIP H. ANSELMO & THE ILLEGALS, released its sophomore album, "Choosing Mental Illness As A Virtue", last month via Anselmo's Housecore Records in the U.S. and Season Of Mist in other parts of the world. The disc is the follow-up to PHILIP H. ANSELMO & THE ILLEGALS' debut, "Walk Through Exits Only", which came out in 2013 to mostly positive reviews.