scumbag music – 20%
Lord_Of_Diamonds, October 2nd, 2023
I’ve seen many writings here which rip on Pantera’s musical characteristics for many of the reasons that I’m about to, but I haven’t seen much talk about the contextual non-musical characteristics surrounding Pantera, which I feel play a large role in compounding how despicable they are. The lack of talk about that makes sense, I suppose, since this is a music review section, not a social commentary section, but art does not exist in a vacuum. Culture, context, intent, consumer experience, and societal influence caused by art all factor into its evaluation, along with the craftsmanship of the artists. And in this case, I’m loath to give any compliments or try to find any good in this band because of all those things. When I think of Pantera, I think of musical elements that I dislike, but simultaneously I cannot help but think of the culture, context, and intent surrounding their music, which all compound my dislike of it. Many unpleasant things are all of a sudden conjured up in my head. I think of empty-headed gym rats who are often seen listening to Pantera (and probably Joe Rogan too) who tell heavy-set people to work out. I think of the band’s prominent use of rebel flag imagery and Phil “I Was Actually Talking About Wine” Anselmo’s history of racist remarks. I think of the bafflingly large amount of metal guitarists who worship at the altar of Dimebag Darrel and attempt to recreate his guitar style and tone (more on that later). I think of the awful macho swagger of bands like Five Finger Death Punch and Disturbed, who derive a lot of their style from Pantera. I think of Anselmo’s cash-grabbing hands dragging Pantera’s name out on tour again, despite Vinnie Paul’s adamant refusal to reunite Pantera while he was alive. However, as much as all of those things piss me off, again, this is a music review section, not a social commentary section. So, I suppose I must focus on the music too.
On this album, Pantera completes the evolution of their sound that started when Phil Anselmo joined the band. Dimebag pulls off cool solos as usual, but he pretty much abandons thrash and classic metal-influenced riffing for brain-bashing atonal chugging, even on passages that cry out for something different, such as “Rise”, whose thrashy drum beat would have benefited much more from a riff that isn’t the 4 chugged power chords that Dime evenly spaces out over 16 measures. All his riffs here have a general quality of sounding basic, lumbering, and stupid, which is bizarre, since Power Metal and Cowboys from Hell (the song) clearly demonstrate that he has it in him to write razor-sharp stuff. His ugly stomping around on the fretboard is sort of like what Prong and Helmet were doing around the same time by regularly using percussive guitar parts, but far less interesting and with a host of other undesirable characteristics around it, the most obvious one being Phil Anselmo. No longer is he pulling out Halford-like high screeches and vocal acrobatics to counterbalance his constipated, tuneless grunt. Rather, he makes said grunt his main vocal style for the album. For the clean-sung ballads, “Hollow” and “This Love”, he adopts a grungy yarl (it was the 90s, after all), and he also does a horrid croaking-muttering spoken word thing occasionally, a move which would be endlessly aped by nu metal bands in the years to come. His lyrics are mostly tales of problems and pain, vague statements of rebellion (“I won’t listen!” “It’s time to rise!”), and tough-guy posturing (“Walk”). He dips his toes into topical matter on “No Good”, which, depending on how you look at it, condemns American racism or calls out for it to continue. Knowing Phil, I suspect he means the latter. He also occasionally makes bizarre, distracting grammatical modifications. It seems like he does this to make his line fit into the number of syllables he has in mind, as in these lines from “Fucking Hostile”: “On broken picture tube”, “Your verbal masturbate”. Good grief, Phil, you sound like a complete doofus when doing this. You sound like a complete doofus in general. At this point I’d almost rather hear the euphemistic sleaze of the “lick my ice cream cone” type lines from the glam Pantera era. But there would never be any vestige of their glam style again on subsequent releases: they had reached their final form at this point. Vulgar Display of Power is the distilled essence of what everybody thinks of when they think of Pantera, whether those thoughts are negative or positive.
If there’s one undeniable thing about Pantera that I’ll give them credit for, they have a signature soundscape, at least for Cowboys from Hell and onwards. Good on them for having a soundscape that is distinctly theirs, but that’s where my compliments for it end. For all that the Youtube guitar ol’ boys club sings the praises of Dimebag’s tone and tries to recreate it, I simply do not see the appeal. It is muddy, scooped, harsh, oversaturated, and plain unpleasant to listen to. It’s the tone you first dial in when you discover guitar distortion. You turn the distortion control up all the way, turn the midrange control all the way down, and give it a healthy bass boost. It sounds exciting to you in person and is fun to play with as you chug around on the first 5 frets, but tends to fall apart on a recording, which it does here. In truth, it is a very weak tone, and its only impact is that of an icepick in my ear on account of irritating high end. The irritation doesn’t stop there, either: Vinnie Paul’s drums. His drum performance is excellent, but his kick drum and toms sound like giant tin cans, his snare is a lifeless crack, and, just like the guitars, the whole thing sounds plain unpleasant to listen to. Occasionally, Rex Brown’s very good bass guitar sound can be heard, yet due to its low level in the mix and Dimebag’s hideous tone, it gets drowned out a lot of the time. A unique soundscape, to be sure, but also a frustrating one, as all of its unique qualities make it stink.
The same can be said for most every unique quality of this album: it stinks. It’s lowbrow, moronic, scummy, and braindead aggressive music that ended up being very influential, as it showed that you could play lowbrow, moronic, scummy, and braindead aggressive music and still top the Billboard 100, which Pantera famously did on the album that followed this one. And it’s because it’s lowbrow and moronic that it appeals to the kind of people that it does, and conjures up the images in my head that it does. It’s a giant bag of tough-guy-wannabe hot air with a few obligatory emotional moments, perfectly fitting in with teen angst, gym rats, metal newbies, and the worst kinds of scumbags. It makes me feel like my brain is dying and I myself am turning into a scumbag just by sheer exposure to the music. It makes me want to take a shower. And it makes me thankful that there is so much more music out there, including groove metal, that is better and less scummy than this. Go listen to some of that instead, please. I swear you’ll thank me for my advice eventually, unless you never grow out of this band, in which case all I can do is shake my head.
rafazardly 