Looks like it’s time to either make some space on your bookshelf or buy a bookshelf, as some required reading for metal fans looks like it’s coming in the next year or so. We’ve known for some time that Pantera/Down/Superjoint Ritual/Arson Anthem frontman Philip Anselmo was writing a book along with Metal Sucks contributor Corey Mitchell. Now the book, Mouth For War: Pantera and Beyond, has gotten a release date. The autobiography will be published on January 13, 2015, according to Amazon, where it’s available for preorder. Here’s what the description of the book says:
In this brutally honest, no-holds-barred memoir, Philip Anselmo, former frontman of the legendary metal band Pantera, finally tells his side of the story—on everything from the band’s meteoric rise to the murder of guitarist Darrell Abbott onstage.
From bar band obscurity to the bright spotlight of the world’s stage, Anselmo helped lead Pantera to world domination. He soared to the top with the first extreme metal album to debut at #1 on the Billboard music charts with Far Beyond Driven in 1994. He turned a bar-bumping glam metal band into the heaviest, most extreme, and most successful heavy metal unit since Metallica. But the ride to the top wasn’t easy.
Soon after Far Beyond Driven topped the charts, Anselmo hit rock bottom at the band’s celebrated return gig in Dallas, Texas, where he was declared clinically dead for more than four minutes after he overdosed on heroin. He later watched Pantera disintegrate due to backbiting, alcohol and drug abuse, and chronic pain. And in addition to nearly killing himself, Anselmo has been blamed for killing the band and wrongfully accused as the reason his best friend and guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott was murdered onstage by a deranged fan.
Anselmo’s rise to the top of the heavy metal heap as the ultimate frontman is the stuff of modern-day legend. Finally, he tells all in this fascinating narrative of his hard-won music career with incredible highs and devastating lows. Mouth for War is the hard, honest, brutal truth.
As if that isn’t enough, Devin Townsend is taking time in between putting out albums to write his own book. This hasn’t happened yet, but Only Half There has its own website in which Heavy Devy asks fans to register their interest in the book being written. It looks to be partially about him and part advice book. As the site says:
With this book I really want to discuss music, my creative process, the connection between my personal development and how my career and music has been lived, and I want to do it frankly and in detail. I want to offer up my experiences – positive and negative – so that it might help other people to follow their muse and get to do what they dream about. I want to contrast what people assume this life and work is based on, with the reality. It’s so easy to get lost in addiction, accolades and criticisms instead of creating music, but essentially that is the healthiest thing in the world: going where the music takes you is so important.
This book is part manual and part diary. It’s a travelogue, a songbook, a celebration, elucidation and condemnation; it’s my story, told by me, for you. If you want it…
If he’s as entertaining as he is on album or on the radio, you’d have to imagine that Devin Townsend will translate well to the page. Just reading about how he’s able to multitask and the possibility of finding out his creative process would be fascinating. If you agree, you’ll probably want to let publisher Rocket 88 know that you want to see it via the site’s page.
