Swastikas, Sieg Heils, and claims that metal is a “white thing”: these overt expressions of white supremacy are widely acknowledged by scholars and participants as present in isolated pockets of the metal scene. Less examined, however, is how members of the scene respond when these ideologies emerge from these pockets with a violent roar or manifest as an insidious whisper.

This paper addresses this gap through a case study of US metal musician Phil Anselmo and his band, Pantera, once deemed as the “saviors of American metal” (Krovatin 2019). Although Anselmo has repeatedly expressed white supremacist views, these actions are often treated as isolated incidents, allowing both his reputation and Pantera’s legacy to remain largely intact. By recovering numerous overlooked examples of racist rhetoric from Anselmo and his bandmates, this paper demonstrates that such incidents constitute an ongoing pattern rather than discrete scandals. Because Anselmo is among the most influential musicians in metal history, this case study reveals just how deeply entrenched and normalized white supremacy has become in the metal scene.

Drawing on semiotic approaches from linguistic anthropology and analysis of interviews, media coverage, and live performances, this study shows how overt and subtle racialized discourses reinforce the metal scene’s white racial frame (Feagin 2009). This paper contributes to conversations about the enduring effects of white supremacy still inherent to the scene today (Hoad 2021; Fischer 2022; Hudson 2026), adding to and expanding the ways in which those who study this genre think about and discuss issues of race.