Phil H. Anselmo & The Illegals – Walk Through Exits Only | Review | Metalbase | Taking Indian Rock, Metal Global

Phil H. Anselmo & The Illegals – Walk Through Exits Only | Review

Mar 23 • International News, Releases, Reviews, The Slumbering Ent • 1933 Views • No Comments on Phil H. Anselmo & The Illegals – Walk Through Exits Only | Review

Mohammad Kabeer reviews the new album from Phil H.Anselmo & The Illegals titled Walk through exits only, released via Housecore Records / Season of Mist.

Phil H. Anselmo & The Illegals – Walk Through Exits Only

TRACKLIST:
01. Music Media Is My Whore
02. Battalion Of Zero
03. Betrayed
04. Usurper Bastard’s Rant
05. Walk Through Exits Only
06. Bedroom Destroyer
07. Bedridden
08. Irrelevant Walls And Computer Screens

Phil Anselmo has always been a part of projects that were completely different from Pantera, be it Superjoint Ritual which was straight up, sludge/hardcore or Christ Inversion which features Phil doing some black metal vocals, and of course the most famous of all these Down, which is just pure southern sludge. On this album however Phil tries to revive his glory days.

Philip Anselmo teams up with the Illegals who are Marzi Montazeri(guitars) Bennett Bartley(bass) and Jose Manuel Gonzales (drums). Their sound can be simply described as a more extreme, gritty form of Pantera’s modern metal , the band uses weird experimentations in the groove metal genre which can be seen in the song Battalion of Zero, along with start/stop rhythms and a slight flirtation with dissonance perfectly exemplified in Betrayed and also uses a very weird, bizarre guitar in the Usurper Bastard’s Rant. Now although all of this sounds interesting on paper, it doesn’t really work out for me, it has all the elements for a great album, but where it falls short is the songwriting. On most of the album, the parts don’t really mesh along with each other and as such seem like a very cut/paste kind of a thing,. This is exemplified in the title track in which you have a very fast guitar solo which then later changes to chugs which just seems very awkward as the guitar solo is on the melodic side and the chugs are really hard and heavy, this can also be said of the last track Irrelevant Walls and Computer Screens which again just seems to ramble on directionless. All seemed like a collage of different parts from different songs.

It’s a real shame that this album..well at least in my opinion anyway did not turn out to be what it was meant to be, maybe die hard Pantera fans will love this one, but it just didn’t do it for me.

P.S.: Nishanth(deckard cain) said some cheeky things to me in my yearly list, well let me tell you that he is a closet Justin Bieber fan and has all his cd’s underwear’s in fact he has a Justin Bieber Gag as well naughty naughty!