By Martin Popoff
That Phil Anselmo is up to his old shenanigans again, not taking care of himself (see below comments on his back problems) and making wildly subversive, incursive, invasive music in yet another side project, Superjoint Ritual, which has unleashed a debut record (on Sanctuary Music) in the form of Use Once And Destroy. Competing for headcase space with the second Down album, Use Once And Destroy is a more belligerent animal - consider it Pantera for punk rockers. The band's personnel is rounded out by Jimmy Bower, III, Kevin Bond and Jimmy Fazzio, and what this gangland gathering has produced is a flamethrown din fueled by a deep love of underdog extreme musics.
I hooked up by phone with Phil, who was somewhere out on the road with Down. The line was clear but I swear, the man's voice is getting so low that at times, like a Harley on idle, I thought I could hear the individual oscillations. Anyway, when he revved the engine, this is what came out.
"Well, Superjoint is a nod to a time when heavy metal and hardcore definitely crossed paths. You know, it feels like that in its purest form, and we all lived through that entire f**king thing. We were influenced by bands like Agnostic Front, Black Flag, Discharge, Doom, shit like that and it fills a f**king beautiful void, because just within songwriting and everything like that, even the opportunity to play guitar on this record is f**king awesome for me. It turned out exactly as we wanted it to. I mean, everything is pretty much old. We've been together since like the early, early, early '90s, probably at the latest '92. We've done like four or five demos. And just through progression and jamming together more and more and more, we had so much material, all we really had to do was pick which ones we wanted for the f**king record. We just knocked them out, and there it is."
SUPERJOINT RITUAL - Slam Heads And Destroy Page 2