Yeah, so I happened to see the recent news that Vinnie Paul is complaining about Phil’s nuttiness in regard to the 2004 Metalhammer interview. So it seems that Pantera’s feuding lives on, especially as the still remaining portions of the band refuse to reconcile their differences, which strikes me as odd considering their success as musicians, but also more probably in my false assumption that losing Dime might have softened both sides of the feud. Nope.

If anything, I think the banter going on now personifies the idea that artists, especially super-star ones, are so removed from real life that they feel that (a) the public cares about their asinine arguments, (b) they are legitimized enough in people worship of them to keep the feud going, and (c) can’t–as adults–figure out how to reconcile, which I find to be the most problematic. More importantly, I think this last item may be a display of my own naiveté in assuming that artists who pose as personifications of supercharged masculine ethics and archetypes might just have some compunction in solving their problems. But someone is feeding on their feud, and someone does not see it as being flippantly wasteful of electronic space. I don’t know. I guess the point that I am getting at is that hero worship, in the form of the artists and pursuits of those artists that the audience/consumer holds dear, must be scrutinized, lest we consume undiscerningly and accept something degraded.

And coming to the conclusion that viewing this argument between metal icons is perverse in the sense that they now embody a spot in the popular music stratum must be considered. Yes, I think these artists fit the bill of superstar sell-outs no matter how you slice it, which is a sad case for sure. Oh well. There’s lots more good shit to listen to these days that does not include a soap opera in the CD inlay.