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PHILIP H. ANSELMO & THE ILLEGALS
Walk Through Exits Only

Housecore (2013)
Rating: 8/10

I guess I’m really showing my age when I say that I always preferred Pantera’s first two albums – Metal Magic (1983) and Projects In The Jungle (1984) – to their extremely successful 90s battering rams. I always felt rather removed from Pantera’s cold, muscular pummelling, especially as I’d already experienced, and appreciated far more, Exhorder’s brutal Slaughter In The Vatican (1990) and The Law (1992) records, which seemed to be far more genuine in their sneer.

Anyway, after all the trials and tribulations of Pantera, there’s always one thing I was sure about, and that was the fact I liked Phil Anselmo. Probably because while he was riding the mighty dollar with his successful chart-friendly “metal” band, he also had his grubby fingers in a lot of other pies, namely Necrophagia, Eibon, Viking Crown and over more recent years, stuff like Down and Superjoint Ritual among others.

Seeing this crazy, all metal dude bark out ‘Cowboys From Hell’ and ‘Mouth For War’ and yet wear a Darkthrone T-shirt always made me chuckle, but it was always with some hesitation that I approached Anselmo’s long awaited full-length debut “solo” album.

I knew it was going to either be a bruising affair or one so drunk and stoned that I’d end up head first in a bin of swampy quicksand. Thankfully, Anselmo and his three-piece band opt for the former, and then some…. Walk Through Exits Only enlists the talents of guitarist Marzi Montazeri, bassist Bennett Bartley and drummer Jose Manuel Gonzales, and what a racket they make.

Upon first listen I’m almost numbed by the sheer power of this eight-track album, which combines punishing straight up metal with bare-knuckles and bloody-nose hardcore, hints of thrash and just a hint of Pantera.

Album opener ‘Music Media Is My Whore’ pretty much sets the scene for the whole album. It’s a militant cacophony of shuffling, marching drums, wailing guitars and Anselmo’s angst-ridden commentary, which for two minutes is merely a hate-filled snarl until we are met, full in the face with the baseball bat that is ‘Battalion Of Zero’; an industrialised thrash assault of charging drums and searing solos and battering riffs.

Anselmo lays down the setting, ranting, growling and bursting a thousand blood vessels along the way. Straight away it’s the commentary of a madman at odds with the world and himself, and through clenched teeth vomits out a wholesome, filling noise that can best be described as sludge metal.

I’m unsure how this will appeal to the masses but I think Anselmo’s monolithic debut will surely drag in the diehards who’ll lap up the grindcore blasts of ‘Betrayed’. Barely a minute passes that isn’t hurtful to the ears, and it’s far from the accessible outing many were expecting.

Strangely, despite the power of Walk Through Exits Only, I’m still left slightly unmoved by Anselmo’s sneers and the band in general’s barbed-wire enema. It’s clearly one of the angriest records this side of the mid-90s, and it would probably have been more suited to those colourless days, but because Anselmo knows his stuff there is still very much a metalhead screaming and howling at the heart of this record.

‘Usurper Bastard’s Rant’ is quite simply the most apt song title you’ll read all year (in fact, for me this would have been the ideal album title) with Anselmo’s vocal range rarely dropping lower than heart attack mode as those fierce drums and twisted, menacing guitars rage time and time again without any lull.

Meanwhile, the title cut is even more lethal, but more groove-based, almost typically mid-90s except for those staggering solos as Anselmo warns, “It’s ruined, everybody ruins music… not just me”, as once again his vocal menace is consumed by waves upon waves of thrash-meets-hardcore-meets-punkoid grey frenzy. The one word that springs to mind time and time again with this opus is “relentless”, because that’s what it is; a crushing, enveloping, stone-faced, confrontational slab that refuses subtlety and continuously promotes aggression.

‘Bedroom Destroyer’ continues in the same vein, adding in a few deft crunches and moodier, doomier riffs which have to fight for space alongside that beefy bass and armoured drum. Anselmo is a man possessed on this record, belting out those notes as if it were his last hour on earth.

‘Bedridden’ is an agitated, writhing sweat-box of a tune which is a fiery blend of speed metal riffing and scything drums. It’s an elephantine track that just keeps going and going like some old locomotive long off its track and hurtling towards the nearest down, building with a maniacal thrash assault that finally hits a wall and splinters into the closing epic ‘Irrelevant Walls And Computer Screen’; a 12-minute act of the most ruthless violence that’ll leave you thinking you’ve been 12 rounds with a heavyweight champion.

Walk Through Exits Only is a record that’s war-torn, hungry, intimidating and, above all, Phil Anselmo through and through. This album doesn’t really fit into any genre, despite the fact it doesn’t stray from its volatile path, because it’s straight from the man’s tattooed heart. It certainly lacks thrills or melody, and isn’t interested in varying time shifts or mid-tempo interludes, because from start to finish Walk Through Exits Only is a constant barrage that stems from the wilderness of Anselmo’s mind.

Some may find such a record way too engulfing, but if you’re a fan of thuggish, belligerent metal then this should keep you going until you finally tap out, to quote an Ultimate Fighting term, choked by the fumes of this uncontrollable machine.

Neil Arnold

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