PHILIP ANSELMO Says It Will Be 'Challenging' To Bring Heavy Metal Concerts Back During Coronavirus Crisis

During an appearance on the latest episode of Revolver's "The Last Show", a video series for road crew relief, former PANTERA frontman Philip Anselmo was asked how social-distancing restrictions will change the concert experience as large public gatherings slowly return during the coronavirus crisis. He responded (see video below): "That's gonna be very difficult, I think, on many levels… We're trying to think of anything just to get shit going again, man, or how to conduct ourselves when shit gets going again. So it is bizarre.

"For us, all this shit is unprecedented," he continued. "I don't know how you get it going again. I don't know. Especially bands that play the genre that we do, the whole point of the band is to pack as many fucking people in a room and have 'em slam and jump and go bananas in the audience; that's the whole point of the show. And, really, throughout my entire career, and I've heard it from zillions of other bands in this genre, we feed — as the band — off the energy of the audience. So it's going to be challenging, there's no two ways about it.

"You look at entertainment and how we soak it in, everybody needs it — everybody needs to be entertained at some point or another, so just getting back to that and adapting to new social rules, it's gonna have to be a must, I guess."

Concerts around the world have been canceled and postponed in efforts to contain the novel coronavirus, with no clear date as to when they might resume.

In early April, Dr. Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel, one of the key architects of the Affordable Care Act and a special adviser to the director general of the World Health Organization, told The New York Times that he doesn't anticipate it to be safe to return to concerts, sporting events and other mass public gatherings until the fall of 2021.

Entertainers, crew and other workers in the industry have already lost billions of dollars as a result of COVID-19-related cancelations, representing only a small fraction of the financial devastation that will be experienced by workers in the sector as cancelations continue to roll in.