“You know what’s strange? I remember being a very young boy, like still riding in the car with mom and shit, before they had seatbelt laws, kids riding in the back and all that crap in the 70s, and the local radio in New Orleans would play 'Am I Going Insane'. And I loved it. I loved that fucking song because I was a kid, and it stuck inside my head. I was living in the neighborhood in New Orleans, where I didn’t know that many kids around me and all my friends were several blocks away. And not all of them were chasing music as much as I was. And I was getting into the Iron Maidens and shit like that, and I had an Iron Maiden shirt, which at the time was kind of unique in my neighborhood. I guess I’m talking about ‘83. Finally I was out and about one day in the neighborhood and I saw this other kid wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, so I walked directly up to him and I was like, “Man, you like Iron Maiden?” and he’s like, “Oh yeah!” Anyway, this dude was a drummer and I was a singer. We were little kids talking about being in a band and all this shit. He ended up being the first drummer in my first garage band. And he had been a Heavy Metal collector. He was like a year older than me, so he had like a year’s worth of chasing music on me, so we went back to his house and listened to music, music, music, music. And that was obviously one of the first times that I heard the ominous-sounding Black Sabbath that we all know and love. That is definitely one of those memories – sitting in his bedroom, smoking terrible marijuana that didn’t really work at all, and listening to Black Sabbath. But I’ll never forget the day he came home with the Sabotage record, he called me up and said, “Dude, you gotta get over here right now. You gotta get over here. You thought you’d heard all the best Black Sabbath but just wait!” and we fucking listened to that Sabotage record and it just smoked us, man. It left such a fucking impact."
“In ‘96 I flew out and jammed with Iommi in the studio, when he was doing his solo record, with a lot of guest artists, and we had an incredible, productive session. Basically I was just handed a bunch of Tony Iommi riffs, while he sat back. You know this is kind of humorous, but I think he has a good enough sense of humor that if he reads this article he might chuckle… but his big ass was sitting there eating trays of sushi and sipping white wine, while I’m sitting there putting his damn riffs together! It was awesome. He was always like, “You go there, Phil!” with a big smile on his face. We were working with this engineer guy named Bob Marlette, and Bob would wear these baggy-ass fucking sweat pants in the studio, and Tony Iommi would sneak up behind him and de-pants him, it was fucking hilarious! And we came up with three songs in three days, man. I’ve known those guys for at least eighteen years or longer, and we were always the band that played right before Ozzy or right before Black Sabbath. Bless his heart, ol’ Osbourne used to go out there and do a set of Ozzy, then come back out and do a set of Black Sabbath – that hard-working, bad-ass motherfucker. Unbelievable. So we were very integrated with these guys, and they have always, always, always been the sweetest group of individuals. And not only that, I cannot leave out the fact that with Pantera and Down, I did shows with the Dio incarnation of Black Sabbath. Ronnie James Dio as a person and as a singer… when you listen to that motherfucker on stage, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anybody more powerful. There’s something about Dio that was just fucking monstrous, almost inhuman, night after night. But on a personal level – Geezer, Tony, Ozzy, Dio, Bill Ward, Vinny Appice… they’re all just the sweetest, most encouraging, taking-you-under-the-wing-type guys you could come across, man. Just always delightful. After they got to know me and knew how much I loved them them, they presented me with a gold 'Sabotage' framed record and a framed platinum 'Paranoid' record. I still have ‘em hanging up on the wall in my house. Those are prized possessions, man. That’s like dreamworld shit. Only a fool would leave out what Black Sabbath brought to the Heavy Metal genre.”
We feel ya on that. Find out who else has their say on Black Sabbath in the amazing new issue, out now and featuring a free CD and Download posters!
As previously reported, NOLA's supergroup DOWN is scheduled to release four EP's dubbed as 'Down IV' throughout the next four years. During a recent interview the bands riff meister Kirk Windstein announced that the first EP, which contains six songs, should be out this summer! This is what Anselmo had to say about this:
"That's the idea right now, but I think that after you work on a body of music, you need to reload, you need to refresh, you need to clear your head. Get that, digest it, get it out of your system, and then decide what direction you're going to go. It's a good idea and I think we should see it through. But there's no way we can rush it. Because I think if it is a series of four, each one should be unique, and that… We've shown flexibility — we have songs like 'Bury Me In Smoke' and then we have songs like 'Stone The Crow'… acoustic pieces and what-not… We have all that. So we've touched on many, I guess, dynamics, so… I would expect each EP to have its own life."
Down's NEW EP will feature the following songs in no particular order:
- 'Levitation'
- 'Witchtripper'
- 'The Misfortune Teller'
- 'The Curse Is A Lie'
- 'Open Coffins'
- 'This Work Is Timeless'
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