I don’t consent
Caleb9000, October 20th, 2017 [EDITADO]
Pantera’s early work is often said to be best left forgotten, as it is basically on the exact opposite side of the metal spectrum from what the band would do in the 1990s. While I personally find the bulk of their work from this era to be overlooked and underappreciated, there is one album that definitely deserves all of the mockery that it is subjected to. That album is their debut. The title of this album alone is enough to make anyone cringe and the cover art is both confusing and hilarious. Seriously though, what the fuck is that thing? The music here is more coherent than the cover art, but it is hardly any better. Even by the standards of glam metal, this album is seriously poor.
Most of the music on here sounds like the members of Kiss had gone next to bankrupt, only to be forced by their record company to record an album on the spot, with no assistance with budget at all. The production on this thing is so low budget and flat that it makes Deathcrush by Mayhem sound well-produced. The bass is practically unintelligible, the guitars are obnoxiously fuzzy and the vocals are buried beneath the rest of the music. But even if this was produced well, it would still be horrendous, as the music is enough to keep it so. It sounds pretty much exactly like Kiss, but with the cheese factor turned way up, and a lead guitarist doing an impersonation of Randy Rhodes. Diamond Darrell is very talented, and his talent shows here. But his leadwork is boring and derivative, though he does show flashes of brilliance occasionally.
Most of the riffs are rather predictable, and there really aren’t a whole lot of them in general. This is one of the simplest Pantera albums from a structural standpoint. I don’t believe that simplicity is inherently bad, but with the lackluster music that it builds on, it just serves to make the music all the more uneventful. There are a few moments where certain sections are repeated ad nauseam, such as the monotonous chorus of “Tell Me if You Want It”. In fact, it’s the choruses in general that fall victim to this, something typical of glam, but the one mentioned beforehand is the biggest offender.
Whenever the music isn’t utterly forgettable, it’s unpleasantly scarring. The best example of this would be the ballad, “Biggest Part of Me”, with one of the most cringe-inducingly cheesy choruses that I’ve ever heard. The title track is also a good example. It’s pretty much the one song where they break away from the Kiss worship (instead, it’s Motley Crue worship), with one of those irritating ear-worm riffs that won’t leave your head alone, even though it never sounded pleasing to the ear to begin with. And it’s all topped off with horrendous whispered vocals that sound like something a bad 1970s R&B singer would do.
Speaking of the vocals, Terry Glaze deserves his own paragraph. He isn’t exactly a bad singer from a technical standpoint, but the way he sings is absolutely grating. He never sings forcefully, half the time he sounds flat and void of any emotion. The other half, he tries to sing with feeling, but instead of coming off as emotive, he just sounds whiny. There is nothing truly convincing about it at all. This is made worse by the horrible lyrics, which I’m sure you can drum of an accurate picture of. Sex, girls, lamenting of past relationships, etc. There’s even a song called “Ride My Rocket”. That should give you a good peak of the borderline self-parody that awaits you in this album.
Debut albums are often said to be the weakest most of the time. There is some truth to that in certain cases, but they are very rarely even close to being this awful. While I dislike some of Pantera’s other work, this is by far their worst effort. It shows a band who have no idea what they’re doing, resulting in an incompetent, annoying and laughable mess of an attempt at making a fun album. This particular brand of metal doesn’t get any worse than this. The other two glam albums from Pantera are overwhelmingly superior to this, as is the rest of their discography. Terry would turn into a more tolerable vocalist, Darrell would become a more tasteful guitarist, and the band as a whole would write music that was much more interesting. But not here. This might as well be looked at as a poorly recorded demo that no one cares about.
Truly fitting words to open the career of such an iconic band. It still baffles me that the reputation for this album is so negative, even by glam-era Pantera standards. Even fans of that era often write this one off. But to me, Metal Magic represents one of the standards for how to do glam metal well, and it’s a real testament to what young musicians can pull off. Say what you will about it or the other Terry Glaze-fronted albums, but at the end of the day, they’re hard to really get mad at. Darrell was only 16 when this was made, and the other members were fresh out of high school. They were just a group of fun, goofball 80s kids doing what they loved, which is where a lot of the charm in Metal Magic comes from. This was in 1983 too, so it’s not like they had the modern tech, conveniences or distribution that we have now. You had to know just the right kind of people or pay shitloads of money for the right resources and teachers to learn how to shred the way Darrell does on this record. So in my eyes, it’s even more impressive that the band could put together an album as good as this. True, they had Dime/Vinnie’s father and his studio to give them a head start, but Metal Magic can still stand as an encouragement for aspiring, young musicians who want to get their material out there. If a group of kids could do it in the 80s, then surely anyone can get themselves known today too, so long as they’ve got talent.
rafazardly 