Pantera !

[AlSymerz]

They are a band I could never get into, don't know why, but anytime I listened to them I just couldn't stay interested for a whole album. No idea what he was like in the band but post Pantera Phil is a fucking moron, his racist chants in Sydney in 2005 or 6 were that of a true arsehole.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Even setting aside for a moment the fact that Pantera come across as your quintessential southern redneck tough-guy morons, their music was simply too dissonant for me to ever get into. The dude just used notes that aren't supposed to go together. I couldn't find the groove, and I do love me some groove. 

[Dead1]

27 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Even setting aside for a moment the fact that Pantera come across as your quintessential southern redneck tough-guy morons,

To be honest all metallers are posers.  Bunch of misfit nerds pretending to be warrior, hardcore types when in fact your average non-music listening jock could pulverise them without breaking a sweat and true psychos generally don't go around wearing bullet belts and corpse paint.

Whole scene is basically make believe and essentially escapist.

 

Pantera at least reflects some sort of reality.  And it's not all just tough guy shit.  There's a real sense of desperation and vulnerability under the tough guy act eg Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills or Suicide Note Pt I & II as well as a sense of trying overcome adversity eg 25 Years or Shedding Skin.

 

It's also what I liked about early Machine Head (1st album is the soundtrack to Rodney King riots), Alice In Chains and Guns N Roses (the true underside of Hollywood) or Motorhead.  It's also what I like about early British hardcore and punk ala Discharge or Sex Pistols or the Varukers (the decay of British society) or Skyclad and Napalm Death (realities of modern consumerism, capitalism and other modern ills).

 

I still like the escapism - be it Cradle of Filth's Hammer horror or early death metal's 1980s horror movie schtik or Iced Earth belting out the plot of the comic book Spawn.

[JonoBlade]

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

The dude just used notes that aren't supposed to go together. I couldn't find the groove, and I do love me some groove. 

Pretty funny that the definition of what came to be known as "groove metal" is a band that you can't find the groove in!

Although, I never understood where "groove metal" came from or why it was associated with Pantera either. To me Pantera was like "post-thrash" just because they came to prominence  in the early-mid nineties when thrash was declining from its heyday, sounded different but was still heavy and not death metal.

In 1992 when I left home, started university and coincidentally bought a CD player where Vulgar Display of Power was one of my first purchases (though second hand) there was only heavy metal, thrash metal or death metal (still pretty new and doom was basically slow death metal because it used the same vocalisation). I hadn't heard of black metal yet. I bet I would have called Pantera thrash.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

I remember when people started using the phrase "groove metal" pejoratively, as an accusation against my Jersey boys Overkill in the 90's when they dared to write some slower songs. Reading some of the M-A reviews of their 90's albums is fucking hilarious. So I guess I love groove metal because I fail to see how mixing it up and writing some slower songs is a bad thing. I'm a man who thinks Reign in Blood is arguably the best metal album ever. So clearly I dig fast shit, but to expect any band to be locked into one rapid tempo forever is stupid. I guess the limit is one or two slower songs per album for a thrash band before people start bitching. People get too hung up on genre labels and defintions. The way I see it groove is a good thing (they called it "boogie" back in the 70's) and it mixes quite well with thrash and death metal and punk. Bring on the fucking groove! 

Just never thought of Pantera as sounding groovy in any way. How can you be groovy and dissonant at the same time? Who knows, maybe you can, but in my brain that's a conflict of interest.

 

Overkill - I Hear Black

 

[AlSymerz]

It's good to see a thread about Pantera having so much Overkill in it

 

[Necrolord]

When Cowboys of Hell came out it had the best guitar tone in metal at the time. 

[RelentlessOblivion]

5 hours ago, Necrolord said:

When Cowboys of Hell came out it had the best guitar tone in metal at the time. 

That’s simply not true. Left Hand Path released the month before, and I’ve always found people have their own opinions on what makes a great guitar tone anyway.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

What's so special about the Cowboys guitar tone anyway? Take out all the squeals 'n shit and the underlying guitar tone they captured is nothing to write home about. I think only a super Pantera fanboi would suggest that. Interestingly, the same producer Terry Date got a much better guitar sound on 1991's Horrorscope. The idea that Pantera carried metal on its back, dragged it through the barren metal wasteland of the 90's and kept it alive by CPR all by itself is recording industry PR nonsense that is isn't even true just for the commercial normie metal universe.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Yeah but the press is a propaganda machine regardless of the topic they’re writing about. So it’s hardly surprising Pantera received such praise at a time when the best known acts of the 80s were either breaking up, see Judas Priest, floundering, see Iron Maiden, or shifting in a more commercial direction, see Metallica. Now obviously I wasn’t conscious of the metal scene during the 90s given that was quite literally the span of my childhood but even with Pantera, being my gateway into metal, I’m not blind to the fact, there’s a plethora of far more influential, heavier, sounding, and more interesting fans that were active during the same time period.

[JamesT]

12 hours ago, Necrolord said:

When Cowboys of Hell came out it had the best guitar tone in metal at the time. 

My favorite band of all time!  Always enjoy discussing the Cowboys from Hell.  I tend to flip-flop between "Vulgar Display of Power" and "Far Beyond Driven" as my favorite album, and "The Great Southern Trendkill" has been the biggest grower on me over the years.  "Power Metal" from 1988 (Phil's first album with the band) is very good as well, and I wish it wasn't such a rarity.  

[Necrolord]

5 hours ago, JamesT said:

My favorite band of all time!  Always enjoy discussing the Cowboys from Hell.  I tend to flip-flop between "Vulgar Display of Power" and "Far Beyond Driven" as my favorite album, and "The Great Southern Trendkill" has been the biggest grower on me over the years.  "Power Metal" from 1988 (Phil's first album with the band) is very good as well, and I wish it wasn't such a rarity.  

Vulgar Display is my favorite.

Sticking with 5 word statements.

 

12 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

That’s simply not true. Left Hand Path released the month before, and I’ve always found people have their own opinions on what makes a great guitar tone anyway.

Tone is subjective for sure. Forgot LHP released same year. Probably takes the cake, actually. Can't fuck with those lows.

 

9 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

What's so special about the Cowboys guitar tone anyway? Take out all the squeals 'n shit and the underlying guitar tone they captured is nothing to write home about. I think only a super Pantera fanboi would suggest that. Interestingly, the same producer Terry Date got a much better guitar sound on 1991's Horrorscope. The idea that Pantera carried metal on its back, dragged it through the barren metal wasteland of the 90's and kept it alive by CPR all by itself is recording industry PR nonsense that is isn't even true just for the commercial normie metal universe.

I ain't no Pantera fanboi. I can enjoy them sometimes. 

Sounded sharper and more modern. Clean, killer tone for shredding. Blew contemporary bands away imo. Best sounding to my ears. That tone blew me away.

Also influenced countless bands afterwards. Everyone wanted to copy it. Seems generic cuz overdone nowadays.

Also, I absolutely hate squeals.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

15 minutes ago, Necrolord said:

Vulgar Display is my favorite.

Sticking with 5 word statements.

 

Tone is subjective for sure. Forgot LHP released same year. Probably takes the cake, actually. Can't fuck with those lows.

 

I ain't no Pantera fanboi. I can enjoy them sometimes. 

Sounded sharper and more modern. Clean, killer tone for shredding. Blew contemporary bands away imo. Best sounding to my ears. That tone blew me away.

Also influenced countless bands afterwards. Everyone wanted to copy it. Seems generic cuz overdone nowadays.

Also, I absolutely hate squeals.

I've never been a fan. Hate everything I've ever heard from them actually. I remember asking a friend about this Pantera band one time, must've been around '92/'93 so he made me up a cassette with Cowboys on one side and VDoP on the other. I played it once, I was like wtf is this nonsense? I've revisited them over the years now and then when they come up in convo, but I still can't see the appeal, the dude used some strange combos of notes that I find irritating. Seems like their music has a lot more in common with modern (at least modern for the 90's) baggy-pants nu-metal or "bouncy" gym bro shit like Dying Fetus or LoG than it does with anything I'd want to listen to.

But I still feel like I can be objective about the guitar tone, which is always a very important consideration for me when evaluating metal albums. I don't care about shredding, I focus on rhythm guitars and riffs. I guess I must not listen to any of the bands that copied Dime's tone. But to each his own, we all like what we like. I know plenty of Pantera fans, I don't hold it against them. I'm sure they probably hate lots of the shit I listen to in return.

[FatherAlabaster]

Dime's guitar tone by itself is kind of annoying to my ears, but it sounds great in the mix. Those buzzy solid state tones fit in really well with the clear bass and the sharp punchy drum sound. Not fun for me to play a sound like that in isolation, but I also don't play riffs like that. He made gold out of it. I think when people try to get "Dime's guitar tone" what they're usually trying to capture is the impact of the mix.

Terry Date was (is?) awesome at capturing what a band sounded like at their best. Way cooler for me to listen to his mixes than some cookie cutter stuff like Sneap and Kernon, it always seemed to me like they went into a job with an ideal "metal band" sound in mind and tried to make every band fit into that box. 

Far Beyond Driven is my favorite mix of theirs, although the bone dry sound on Trendkill really hits home for me lately. Musically it's probably between Driven and Vulgar. Cowboys and Trendkill are on the second tier. But they've gone the way of nearly all my favorites from back then, I'll enjoy it if I hear it on in the background but I have almost no interest in putting it on myself.

[RelentlessOblivion]

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Dime's guitar tone by itself is kind of annoying to my ears, but it sounds great in the mix. Those buzzy solid state tones fit in really well with the clear bass and the sharp punchy drum sound. Not fun for me to play a sound like that in isolation, but I also don't play riffs like that. He made gold out of it. I think when people try to get "Dime's guitar tone" what they're usually trying to capture is the impact of the mix.

Terry Date was (is?) awesome at capturing what a band sounded like at their best. Way cooler for me to listen to his mixes than some cookie cutter stuff like Sneap and Kernon, it always seemed to me like they went into a job with an ideal "metal band" sound in mind and tried to make every band fit into that box. 

Far Beyond Driven is my favorite mix of theirs, although the bone dry sound on Trendkill really hits home for me lately. Musically it's probably between Driven and Vulgar. Cowboys and Trendkill are on the second tier. But they've gone the way of nearly all my favorites from back then, I'll enjoy it if I hear it on in the background but I have almost no interest in putting it on myself.

That’s more or less, where I’m at with Pantera these days as well, and most of the other bands that got me hooked on metal in the first place.