PHIL ANSELMO's Dimebash Incident In 2016 Nearly Derailed SCOUR

Phil Anselmo did something pretty damn stupid during Dimebash 2016, as we all know. Right after performing Pantera‘s “Walk” during Dimebash 2016 at the Lucky Strike Live in Hollywood, CA, Anselmo did a Nazi salute and yelled “white power” to the audience. Anselmo tried to explain the situation as an inside joke between himself and some other musicians drinking white wine backstage, but was called out for doing exactly what he did.

In a new interview with the John The Ninja podcast, Anselmo‘s Scour band Derek Engemann said Anselmo‘s actions were the result of being heckled by fans calling him a racist. Which I’m not sure if doing a Nazi salute even as a joke is a good reaction to being called racist, but it happened and here we are.

“So, they jammed all night for Dime, bringing out supergroups of [different] people. Rex was there; all kinds of people were there. And Phil came out at the end for three songs. I think they did Motörhead [cover], they did ‘A New Level’, I think, and something else. The second [Phil] came out on stage, there was a group of these three guys that were just — they were just heckling him from the second he walked out on stage, like, You racist. You fucking racist,’ blah, blah, blah.

“And everyone’s, like, ‘Yo, shut the fuck up. We’re trying to enjoy Pantera. This is for Dime. This isn’t about your bullshit.’ And they just kept on heckling him the entire time he was out. And at the end, he just lost it. And he was a little drunk and he did the most offensive thing he could to those people. And they were there with their camera.

“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.”

Engemann later noted that Scour was just about to announce they were a band and put out their debut material around that time. Scour had a bunch of labels interested, but it all got delayed thanks to the aforementioned “joke.”

“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.”