Song of the Week #7
A stoner at Knebworth festival once leant over in his deck chair mid-conversation to tell 14 year-old fresh-faced me “You know… there are 2 Pantera songs everybody needs on their iPod”. As he proceeded to try and recollect what they were, he instead lost his train of thought and got talking about the then-new viral videos involving 2 women and a cup, and a single man and a glass jar - safe to say that was probably society’s lowest ebb before the real age of social media and smart phones.
I wouldn’t be able to say why the man who sat in his chair smoking jays all weekend only vouched for 2 Pantera songs, but I would have guessed in hindsight that they were any 2 out of the most famous 3 tunes - Cemetery Gates, Cowboys from Hell, and Walk. Pantera are a real curveball in the music world, typically marmite between most rock listeners (more as in you either love them, or really couldn’t care less whether they existed), yet seemingly hitting their peak popularity and cult status in the years that followed the unfortunate death of guitarist Dimebag Darrell, despite several top 10 billboard albums during their heyday. Its perhaps interesting to take the view that no doubt more music probably could, and would have come from Pantera had the unfortunate onstage shooting not have occurred, but considering all of the band in 2004 were closer to their 40th birthday than the 27 Club, it does make you wonder if it was all better left unsaid (or unplayed as it were).
When looking at it with rose-tinted glasses, people remember the Abbott brothers playing in perfect syncopation on the music videos with a bare chested Phil Anselmo resembling a battle-hardened silverback beating his chest and screaming himself hoarse down a microphone to deliver unforgettable shows and even better music. Pantera with their “fuck you.” attitude, memorable tunes and magical guitar solos offered metal fans a viable alternative to the grunge train that gathered steam in the decade before the new millennium. What people fail to remember is how much the band (or more correctly, Phil Anselmo vs company) disliked or even hated each other in the 2nd half of the 1990s. However, it is exactly that era of Pantera that I’ve chosen to focus on for Song of the Week.
The Great Southern Trendkill is an album that was recorded in 2 locations, and I think it was exactly this mix of distancing, the sense of loathing at the time and Phil’s crippling back pain (and consequent drug and drink addiction) that really created something special. Yet unfortunately, this album often gets cast aside in preference to the original sound and easy listening found in the Cowboys from Hell, or the attitude and sheer groove found in the opening 4 tracks of Vulgar Display of Power. Everything from the lyrics to the music took a downward turn to become a lot darker than the previous work, and as a result, GST is by some margin my favourite Pantera album and probably the only one I could listen to front-to-back on repeat. The song is called War Nerve - enjoy!