On March 21, 1994 a name unfamiliar to many
weekly readers of Billboard appeared at number one
on that week's chart of the top 200 best-selling
albums. The name was Pantera and the album
attached to it, Far Beyond Driven, their third, had
shattered all expectations.
All, that is, except those of the legion of Pantera fans
who have followed the band from Dallas bars to the
world's arenas.
With just three albums -- Cowboys From Hell, Vulgar
Display Of Power and Far Beyond Driven -- Pantera
has sold over six million albums worldwide. These
numbers, however, don't begin to tell the story that
will matter in the long run, the story that matters to
their millions of fans. The real story is in the power of
Pantera's music, savage, searing, soulful rock & roll
that stands unchallenged in its intensity. With a
fiercely independent attitude, they have accomplished
their success with little support from radio or MTV
and without catering to the momentary whims of "the
industry." Immune to the tyranny of trend, they have
become the outspoken standard-bearers of musical
integrity, D.I.Y. spirit, and rebelliousness. They've
taken their uncompromising music straight to the core
of hard rock fans who demand that if a band talks the
talk, they damn well better walk the walk.
Their new album, The Great Southern Trendkill, finds
Pantera poised to strike once more. The album
shows remarkable growth among its members as
individuals and in the band as a whole, with tight
songwriting that displays a new sense of melody yet
somehow wrings still more venom from their
instruments than ever before. The album's tone is set
with the title track, opening with an explosive squall of
drums, guitar and Philip Anselmo's guttural growl.
The song virtually codifies the band's philosophy, its
relentless rage levelled at the corrupt, the
hypocritical, the weak-willed. "It's bullshit time
again/You'll save the world within your trend ....
/Pierce a new hole/If Hell was 'in' you'd give your
soul," Philip roars in a merciless indictment. That
sentiment is brutally reiterated in the last two tracks,
"The Underground In America" and "(Reprise)
Sandblast Skin," with its refrain of "It's all fake/it's
getting old, old, old."
In between, the album thunders unabated,
devastating everything in its path. The band stops,
starts, turns on a dime with the daunting precision,
like a powerful, well-oiled machine straining at the
joints to perform perilously beyond its capacity. The
first single, "Drag The Waters," throbs with
spellbinding power, its lyrics plumbing the depths of a
darkened soul. From the somber beauty of "Suicide
Note Pt. I" to the incendiary force of its follow-up "Pt.
II," from the dissonant atmospherics of "10's," to the
sinister, soulful vocals of "Floods," Pantera is in full
stride. And when they hit their patented power
groove, there's not a band on the planet that can
keep up.
As usual, the album was produced by "fifth member"
Terry Date, along with drummer Vinnie Paul and the
rest of the band. In a turn away from past experience,
however, the band opted not to record in an existing
studio, choosing instead to build their own, which
they did -- right in Dimebag's back yard. "We had to
go all the way to Nashville to record Driven, and we
didn't want to do that again. And there's only one
really good studio in Dallas, but it's 45 minutes away
and we didn't want to do that either," Vinnie says. "So
we built one over at Darrell's place. Now we'll always
have it." The band took a bit more time preparing in
advance for Trendkill, as well, recording demos and
working out parts before entering the studio. The
result is a new level of confidence and impact. As
Philip recently told Rip magazine, "It's a different
record, but we're not going to change for anybody.
We just want to deliver gut-level motherfucking
songs. We don't want to let any of our fans down and
I know for a fact we have not done that. The new
shit's fucking brutal."
With The Great Southem Trendkill complete, Pantera
will take to the road again, co-headlining a summer
tour with White Zombie then continuing on their own.
To fully understand Pantera, it is essential to witness
their wrath unleashed on the stage. "It's a one
hundred percent pure energy release from both the
band and the audience," Vinnie asserts. This is one
mosh pit you won't want to miss.
Ounce for ounce, decibel for decibel, few bands can
approach the fury that is Pantera. The Great
Southem Trendkill won't just put Pantera on a level
playing field with the popular purveyors of the "rock of
the moment" -- it will leave such panderers flattened
on the highway to rock & roll immortality.
