Phil Anselmo called in and offered BW&BK; this update from the road. "Well, after this particular Down tour we take a couple weeks off, do the Superjoint tour, take a week off, hit Ozzfest for two months with Down. I'm booked."

With respect to Rex’s comment to us previously that he would like Down to do a number of covers on the road, Phil answers that, "We have done no covers. Originally we had planned to maybe do something here and there. Now, having two records, we're able to throw up pretty much as much time as we want. And of course, you've got your group of kids screaming for songs that we're not going to fucking play. That's another avenue we can take further, you know? Maybe think of throwing that song in the set, or mixing things up a bit. And once you're at that point and able to do that, cover tunes are more of a luxury. To me, if we we're going to do cover tunes, the crowd would probably be like, scratching their head, because they probably wouldn't know what the fuck we're playing. Because I would personally want to do stuff like St. Vitus, Witchfinder General, Pentagram, Trapeze, even Jethro Tull, something like that."

And with respect to Pantera? "Pantera will be its own animal. Pantera is going to… at the level where at, things like that, I'm sure we're going to sit back for a second once we all get back together and look at the landscape and decide which pulverizing way to take it. There's no doubt in my mind that it's going to be bone-jarring heavy metal, you know, the anthemic heavy metal that we're known for. I just want to know where everybody's head's at. I want to know what the true logical next step for Pantera should be at before we actually take the step. As far as doing different mediums of music, that is the epitome of why you make a side band. If I was to approach Pantera with music that I had written for any of my other bands, it just would not feel natural, correct or anything; it wouldn't feel good at all, it wouldn't feel right at all. Basically that's saying that we know, as Pantera, we know how to write Pantera music. We've done it for so many fucking years. I just want to take it - once again, you know, me being me - I just want to take it that next hundred feet further. I want more, you know? More and more and more."

We wondered if there was any more black metal in Phil’s future. "No. Probably not. I did black metal when black metal was black metal. There were bands that I'm in or were in that never really got to be heard because of conflicting schedules and just not having the time to release it. But I will release a couple of demos I did with a band called Christ Inversion. Now to me, that was about as much, or closest to black metal that I ever really want to get. It's fucking bombastic music, I mean, it really is. It's hell-stoked, you know (laughs). There's no doubt about it. When it comes out, you'll see what I'm talking about. I'll have a history of what really went down with the record, so you'll understand where our heads were at and what year we did it, and so on."