Scour Guitarist Stands Up for Phil Anselmo Over 2016 Dimebash Incident: “That’s Not Who He Is”
If there’s one thing that Phil Anselmo will probably never live down (and rightfully so) is the moment during 2016’s Dimebash event where he stood on stage and did a Nazi salute while screaming what looked and sounded like “white power”. And though he first made the apparently debunked claim that the disgusting gesture was a joke about drinking white wine backstage, he ultimately apologized for his actions.
During a recent interview with the John The Ninja podcast (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), one of Anselmo’s current bandmates — Scour guitarist and former Cattle Decapitation bassist Derek Engemann — addressed the incident and attested to Anselmo’s contrition.
“It’s not the best part of history, but Phil’s owned it. He’s apologized. That’s not who he is. I’ve toured with him around the world with The Illegals, Scour shows, Pantera stuff. It’s just not who is. Even our most recent videos were shot by Malcolm Pugh, who’s half black. That’s my dawg. We go back 20 years too. We used to live together and whatnot. But he said people kept asking him, like, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you’re working with [Phil] after that.’ And he’s like, man, ‘Phil’s been nothing but gracious to me, backstage, at his home.’ He’s, like, ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
“So, I don’t know. I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s, like, that’s not who [Phil] is. It was a bad moment.”
Reflecting back on that time, Engemann reiterated the Anselmo’s claim that he’d been heckled by a number of people at the show when he went out on stage. In his claim, those people kept calling Anselmo a racist (because he’s done some fucked up shit in the past, too).
Engemann said Anselmo’s decision in that moment was to do “the most offensive thing he could to those people.” Which as a public figure is pretty fucking dumb/childish.
“It wasn’t like he had pure hate in his heart, and he’s, like, ‘This is what I’m gonna say tonight. I’m gonna make a statement.’ It was, like, these motherfuckers were heckling him all night long, and he just threw gas on the fire. And it was super unfortunate. I know he feels terrible about it. [It was] probably a little embarrassing, I’m sure.”
Still, bands Anselmo works with sometimes continue to feel the repercussions of those actions. Engemann said the incident was a major concern for Scour’s launch.
“We weren’t sure if Scour was gonna happen, ’cause we had the stuff ready to go, and we had every record label wanting to put it out at that time. We almost had our pick. And then that happened, and we didn’t have our pick anymore. So the album got delayed by, like, six, eight months. And then I wanna say it was the first thing that was released by Phil after that incident. So it was kind of, like, ‘How much slack are we gonna be taking for this?’ ‘Cause black metal has a history of some not nice people involved, and it was kind of a toss-up. But we were, like, ‘You know what? The music’s good. We’re just gonna go with it.’ We put it out.”
