Famous for spitting venom and fury as the vocalist of ’90s metal titans Pantera and New Orleans supergroup Down, Phil Anselmo explores his melancholy side with En Minor. After making their debut in 2019 with a two-song 7-inch, Anselmo’s Southern gothic ensemble—which features longtime collaborators Jimmy Bower (Down, Eyehategod), Kevin Bond (Superjoint), and Stephen Taylor (Philip H. Anselmo and the Illegals), among others—returns with their full-length debut When the Cold Truth Has Worn Its Miserable Welcome Out. “The title comes from a lyric in ‘Blue,’ the second track on the album,” Anselmo tells Apple Music. “It pretty much encapsulates what I was trying to get across with the record—the beautiful misery of existence, learning one’s limits and getting on with life.” Below, Anselmo walks us through the songs—many of which originated in the ’80s and ’90s. Mausoleums “When I originally started recording what would end up being En Minor stuff, this is one of the songs that really set the bar. Steve Taylor started strumming, I started singing, and then we both stopped and looked at each other. Then he mumbled the first couple lyrics, ‘Crush your heart and hope to die,’ messing around with that old kids’ saying, and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to use that, along with this awesome riff you came up with.’ So that’s what really set everything in motion for us to keep on writing.” Blue “This is the first song with the full band on it, because ‘Mausoleums’ has minimal percussion. But this one’s haunting; it’s miserable, and there’re certain spots in this song where I went for feel over perfection by a mile. There are absolutely some imperfect notes in the chorus, but the imperfections make it more horrifying in a weird way. It made it exemplary within some kind of chamber of haunts. It’s one of my favorites.” On the Floor “That is a Kevin Bond special, where he just walked in and said, ‘Hey, I got a riff.’ But it really was two or three riffs and I caught a little vocal melody right off the bat. So we had Kevin go in and track it live with Jimmy, and everyone else kind of did their thing around that. This is also a different mix than the version that’s on the 7-inch. The vocal levels are up, and I think there’s some cello stuff in there that’s maybe not on the 7-inch version.” Dead Can’t Dance “I don’t see any connection or similarities to the band Dead Can Dance, but they’re awesome. They are fucking majestic, and of course any great band that plays with minor-key melodies and writes beautiful songs, they’re going to be an inspiration to me one way or another. But one of the reasons I wanted to call this ‘Dead Can’t Dance’ is because the riff sounds like a lazy waltz or something. The other reason is that I ended up playing drums on this song, and I suck at drums. You could say I can’t play drums.” Love Needs Love “I went through life with a chip on my shoulder—I was angry, angry, angry—but I did a lot of soul-searching after I quit drinking. And I thought about where this anger came from, and I found out that the anger I have is nobody else’s problem. It should not affect anyone else at all. So from that point on, I chose—like I always wanted to—to approach each situation with love and decency first. It’s easy to do. When you meet people on the street, just be kind; be nice. I think you need to look for the love instead of the ugly thing. And you know, nine times out of ten it rubs off.” Warm Sharp Bath Sleep “As human beings, we are utterly imperfect. We’re all calm as kittens one minute, but if something goes the wrong way, we’re fierce as lions the very next second. This song talks about that in our relationships, and the title absolutely alludes to doing oneself in while in the tub. People will drive other people crazy enough for that to happen. It’s part of life. We've got to deal with it.” Melancholia “Back in ’97, when I was still living in New Orleans, I was going through a bit of a dry spell writing. So I told myself that I was gonna pick up a guitar and form a chord and whatever it is, I’m keeping it and working it out into a song. So that became ‘Melancholia.’ But the first lyric says it all: ‘Self-loathing.’ That can be seen in itself as weak—nobody wants to hear anybody bellyaching. However, I do believe that as human beings, we do need some time to loathe ourselves—and time to bitch about it. But we should make that time temporary. Just get it off your goddamn chest—go ahead and be miserable so we can move through this and get to a better spot.” This Is Not Your Day “This is another one that goes back to probably around ’96 or ’97 down in my old jam room. I had a myriad of people there that normally wouldn't have been there for a jam session. They weren't necessarily musicians at all, but I gave everybody—it was probably about 10 people—I gave everybody either percussive instruments or something like a guitar with totally dead strings or an electric guitar that wouldn't resonate—not through an amp, but just for the rhythm sound. So I gave all these people these instruments and I came up with a riff and that eventually became ‘This Is Not Your Day’ later on.” Black Mass “This was probably written in the later ’90s, but it went under a different title. We tracked this one about five years ago and I sang my parts and then hated the verses for about four and a half years. Finally, when we were getting the record finished, I said, ‘Okay, there’s no fucking way I can let this song go the way it is.’ So I went in and resang them in a different way and, man, I was so fucking relieved. The little harmony that I do reminds me of some old radio-rock-type song that I’d hear in New Orleans growing up. I can’t really put my finger on it, but that’s what I think of.” Hats Off “This was the second song that we wrote together after ‘Mausoleums,’ and it was so simple and so creepy and so old-spaghetti-Western-style that it maybe felt like an affront to fuck with its simplicity. So really it’s just a vibe thing and the words just fell out of my mouth. It’s a simple song, so we did not want to mess with it much further.” Disposable for You “To me, this song is probably a little peek into an epic style that En Minor can do, whereas most of the songs on the record are one part, two parts, very simple but with a lot of layering. This song and ‘There’s a Long Way to Go,’ from the 7-inch, were kind of written together in 1988 when I got my first Ford truck. But then the ending of the song, where it breaks away from the chorus, was written in like ’96. The way it ends is kind of ongoing, so it felt like a safe bet to close the record.”