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PANTERA: A VULGAR DISPLAY
OF METAL
by Don Kaye
“The thing about us is that we always stayed on the ground
level with the fans,” proclaims Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell in
his proud Texas twang. “We never rode above the fans – I’m a fuckin’
fan myself – and we always had great interaction with them. They’re
us, we’re them, we’re all for one and stronger than all.”
Of course, it took the Dallas-based Pantera time to find their
groove, shape their sound, and harness the right mix of combustible
personalities. The band emerged in the early Eighties, when drummer
Vinnie Paul and his guitarist brother Dimebag Darrell put Pantera
together with bassist Rex Brown and vocalist T Lee. After three
self-released albums, it was clear that a remarkably different
heavier sound was evolving. Enter new frontman and New Orleans
native Philip Anselmo, , on a fourth independant release. The
collaboration with the heavy trio and explosive singer was about to
set the stage for a harder, more damaging, trademark Pantera.
After being turned down “twenty-eight times by every major label on
the face of the earth,” an Atco Records A&R rep named Mark Ross saw
the band when Hurricane Hugo stranded him in Texas. The long-sought
record deal finally arrived, and with it, Pantera’s “official” 1990
debut, titled Cowboys From Hell. Co-produced by the band and
Terry Date (Max Norman turned the project down in favor of Lynch
Mob), Cowboys From Hell took Pantera’s evolution to the next
level. Darrell’s chugging, jagged guitars, Vinnie’s machine-gun,
darting drums, and Philip’s collection of harsh screams,
clenched-fist roars, and eerie melodies, all fused together into a
sound they called “power groove.”
“Cowboys is where everybody came into their own, along
with the full-blown Pantera sound,” says Vinnie. “That was actually
the first song we wrote for the record. Basically it was about us
coming out of Texas and being out of place. People don’t think of
Texas as being a hot spot for heavy metal, they think of New York or
L.A. or something like that, so it just seemed like an obvious
concept for us.”
Cowboys From Hell spawned several other unquestionable
classics, including the moody, morbid epic, “Cemetery Gates.”
“We’ve always done a bunch of musically diverse things,” says Dime.
“I’m a big fan of King’s X and bands like that. I was just showing
a broader side of the band, the more melodic stuff we can do.”
Months of solid touring molded the band into an even more
lethal live act than they had been before, and two years after the
release of Cowboys, the band reconvened to lay down what many
fans consider their masterpiece: Vulgar Display Of Power.
Working with Date again, the band carved out an even more
incendiary sonic assault on an album that truly lived up to its
monicker with frightening intensity.
The disc yielded, among others, the awesomely heavy shuffle,
“Walk,” the pummeling, warped riffage of “Mouth For War,” and the
disturbing, bitter “This Love.” Vinnie: “If there’s one thing that
Philip did the very best, it’s that he always wrote straight from
the heart. He never candy-coated anything or had a bullshit way of
saying anything in his lyrics. ‘This Love’ was pretty much the
story of a relationship that he had been in, that just didn’t work
out, and he was fuckin’ pissed about it!”
More endless roadwork followed the release of Vulgar Display,
elevating the band into bigger venues and drawing larger audiences
all the time. By the time 1994 and Far Beyond Driven rolled
around, Pantera was established as the metal act to beat in
terms of heaviness, sheer power, and slavish allegiance to the metal
lifestyle.
“We drove ourselves, that’s for sure,” says Vinnie about the
album, which remains the most extreme disc to ever debut at
Number One on the Billboard Top 200. “We didn’t debut at
Number One for any other reason than all the fans we had made on
tour. We still weren’t a radio band or anything like that, so it
was strictly word-of-mouth and the live show that did it.”
“We couldn’t get airplay and nobody gave a fuck about it, but
the fans damn sure did,” agrees Dime. “We wrote that record for
them.”
The first single from the album, “I’m Broken,” was “a
soundcheck riff – one of them ones where I’d walk in with a hangover
from ripping it up night after night with everyone in every town,”
chuckles Dime. “That’s where a lot of the best riffs I ever wrote
came from. I just played the first riff I thought of, Vinnie started
kickin’ in on it, Rex joined in, we didn’t write the entire song on
the spot, but we kept toying with it and finally worked on it once
we got into the studio.”
And then there’s “Five Minutes Alone,” which crystallized the
band’s “take no shit” attitude, as Vinnie explains: “There was a
guy in the front row at Pine Knob in Detroit who was heckling Phil.
Finally, several people in the crowd just jumped this guy’s ass and
beat the shit out of him on the spot, so he sued us. And when his
dad called our manager, his exact quote was, ‘you just give me five
minutes along with that Phil Anselmo guy and I’ll show him who’s big
daddy around here.’ Phil’s response was, ‘You just give me five
minutes along with that cat’s dad and I’ll whoop his ass.’ That’s
where that song came from.”
As brutal as Far Beyond Driven was, it ended on an
uncharacteristically quiet note with the band’s cover of Black
Sabbath’s dreamlike “Planet Caravan.” “Black Sabbath’s one of our
all-time favorite groups,” says Vinnie. “We got asked to be a part
of the first Sabbath tribute record, Nativity In Black, and
we were thinkin’ about what song to do, and we just suddenly decided
that “Planet Caravan” was a cool song, plus nobody would even expect
it. It turned out great, but due to legal circumstances, we ended up
not being on Nativity In Black, so we added it to the end of
Far Beyond Driven. We thought it was the perfect way to end
the record.”
The Great Southern Trendkill, released in 1996, is now
considered Pantera’s “overlooked” album, coming out as rap-metal was
hitting its stride and temporarily drowning out the mighty Pantera
roar. Trendkill did, in fact, find Pantera adding some
different spices to their corrosive metallic stew, but the chilling
“Drag The Waters” best represents the album. “That song is about a
lifetime of dealing with people that you can’t tell what they’re
really comin’ at you for, or what their motives really are,” snarls
Dime. “You’ve got to drag the waters to get to the bottom and find
out the truth.”
It was four years before Pantera released their next
full-length studio effort, but the band was far from inactive.
Touring nonstop, the boys still managed to find time to release a
live album, Official Live: 101 Proof, featuring the ominous
studio bonus track, “Where We Come From,” and a scalding cover of
Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” for the soundtrack of the
Kiss-themed movie, Detroit Rock City. “Gene Simmons actually
approached us to be a part of that,” remembers Vinnie. “And we were
like, ‘we’re old Ted fans, let’s see if we can do a throwdown
version of it.’ To this day, I probably still hear our version in
titty bars more than I hear his.”
Dimebag Darrell calls the band’s most recent studio album,
2000’s Reinventing The Steel, a “best-of in its own right,” a
mix of elements from the albums that had preceded it. Even the
closing epic, “I’ll Cast A Shadow,” was a monster. “Usually when we
write, the songs come together really fast,” says Dime. “But
sometimes, you’ll be drilling at one for hours before you realize it
ain’t workin’. This was one of those. So we put it on the back
burner, finished up all the other tunes, then went back to give it
one more pull. We rearranged it, throw a few new parts in, and it
really brought it to life. I think it ended up being the baddest-ass
song on the whole record.”
“Goddamn Electric,” a tribute to metal itself, was another
bad-ass anthem, and warranted a special guest appearance. “We
thought, ‘this song just gives so much respect to these other bands
like Black Sabbath and Slayer, we’ve just gotta get Kerry King down
here to put a lead on the motherfucker,’” relates Vinnie. “We went
and met him at the Starplex in Dallas when Slayer was on Ozzfest. I
took some portable recording gear, and we recorded that lead – first
take, one take only, backstage in the bathroom at the Starplex. And
it’s awesome.”
As one of metal’s most ferocious acts, with one of its most
insanely devoted audiences, it’s clear as an empty whiskey bottle
that Pantera’s impact and influence on heavy music is still being
felt. “Every time I hear a kick drum with that extra slap on top,
or that chainsaw sound on the guitar, I know where it came from,”
concludes Dime. “We’re just glad we can hand it down and see
everyone else bring some new shit to the table and keep passing it
on. I’m glad we could actually put a stamp out there that everybody
could get a pull off of.”
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