During a recent interview with Brazil’s Inside With Paulo Baron, former PANTERA singer Philip Anselmo spoke about the lyrical inspiration for A Lethal Dose Of American Hatred, the 2003 album from his SUPERJOINT RITUAL project.
He said: “I was calling America out. That’s what that record’s about. The ignorance of the warmongering America. I’m against it, man.
“I was raised toward the end of [the] Vietnam [War]. I saw what Vietnam did. My mother told me explicitly what Vietnam was and what America was doing. She was a very young person — by the time she was telling me about all this stuff, she was probably 23 years old. And I was very young. And I lived, at the time, in the French Quarter [of New Orleans] with my mother, my aunt and her boyfriend. And her boyfriend had just come home from Vietnam. And he would wake up in the night screaming. So my mother had to explain to me the horrors of war early.
“I wasn’t allowed to have toy guns. I wasn’t allowed to have war games — I wasn’t allowed to have any of that sh*t,” Anselmo continued. “And to this day, it did rub off on me. I’m anti-war. I don’t like guns either. I know some people are into guns. I’m not knocking ’em. That’s just the way it is. And I’m also a realist. I live in America. America’s got f*cking guns. So, I’m not delusional. So, it’s just living with the guns — what’s the smart way to do it?
“So, with the SUPERJOINT record, yes, I was bashing America because we had just… I forget which war it was; it might have been Desert Storm or whatever. I might be wrong, but it’s one of those damn wars, never-ending wars. I hate it. I hate it. And I hate that my home country are the biggest f*cking bullies, man. I hate it. I f*cking hate it.
“So, that’s what that SUPERJOINT [record] was about. Yeah, man, that’s how I feel about that stuff. I don’t like oppression. I don’t like f*cking classes — lower class, upper class; I don’t like all that. I like people. And I want people to be happy, and I want people to have the opportunity to live their f*cking lives in happiness — the way they want to live.”
