The sophomore release from Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals, “Choosing Mental Illness As A Virtue” is not one to be taken lightly. While their debut album “Walk Through Exits Only” may have been compared to Pantera’s most heaviest album “The Great Southern Trendkill” in some ways, this followup is a different beast altogether while still maintaining the chaos that this band throw down.
Phil Anselmo may be best known as the frontman for Pantera for many years before the disintegration of that iconic band and then of course later as a key member in Down, but Phil has definitely carved himself a reputation over the years as a man of extremes. His drug use during the Pantera years were of course infamous but a clean and sober legend managed to participate in numerous projects of which some were brilliant and others were relegated to mere footnotes in extreme metal history. When first hearing Phil and The Illegals on their debut album 4 years ago, many compared it to “The Great Southern Trendkill” as far as vocal delivery and technique but one of Phil’s greatest projects, Superjoint Ritual automatically comes to my mind when I think of his latest work.
“Choosing Mental Illness As A Virtue” is a brutal album, heavy in attack but chaotic in style and grandeur. With a lineup that consists of Mike DeLeon and Stephen “Schteve” Taylor on guitars, Jose “Blue” Gonzales on drums and Walter Howard on bass duty, the illegals have managed to mash up various styles of grindcore, thrash and just outright extreme aggression. Phil himself, while having struggled to retain that signature vocal style for some time now due to various factors that wouldn’t preclude age and vocal destruction from numerous live shows over the years, actually sounds pretty damn good here.
Sonically it’s a rough and tumble affair starting with the opener “Little Fucking Heroes“, a chaotic slab of blast beats and frenzied riffs. Unapologetically it’s the war cry for the rest of the album as each song flows through one by one. “Utopian” starts out almost in classic heavy metal style before splattering gore infested madness and ending with a doom style outro. The title track switches gears constantly and contains one of the more memorable lyrical lines as Phil solely says, ‘I swear if I could merely shake it off, I would“, commenting on the travesity of mental ilness and how devastating it can be to anyone. A poignant remark given the recent deaths of musicians lately.
The chaos continues: “The Ignorant Point” is a wall of avante garde, grindcore noise, “Individual” has some of the best guitar riffs driving this thrashy number and “Finger Me” is chock full of riff goodness. The album ends with the longest track “Mixed Lunatic Results” which is broken in 2 parts stylistically speaking, 1 part extreme and 1 part atmospheric and creepy. As Phil said recently when commenting on the new songs in which he says “ “Our new album, ‘Choosing Mental Illness As A Virtue’ is going to get hated. It’s going to get loved”, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s not for everyone but if you love music to be completely left of field and super aggressive, then this should be right up your alley.
TRACKLIST
Little Fucking Heroes
Utopian
Choosing Mental Illness
The Ignorant Point
Individual
Delinquent
Photographic Taunts
Finger Me
Invalid Colubrine Frauds
Mixed Lunatic Results
