James Niggemeyer

Ten years ago this morning, I was a college junior walking to my favorite English class when my friend Matt (on his way to becoming a famous musician in The So So Glos) stopped me. "Hey Ben, did you hear about Damageplan?"

"Yeah, Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul's new band. What about them?"

"Someone killed Dimebag and three other people last night."


This show is terrible, and the tracking is off, but please sit through it for glimpses Officer Niggemeyer's courage.

I don't remember my reaction, or what book my classmates talked about while I stressed out. I spent the rest of the day between the library, refreshing Google News by the minute in hopes of some sort of insight into what had happened, and my room, where my high school metalhead friends, tightly bonded in Virginia but now split up by college all over the country, had already left me somber messages by the time I arrived. "Cemetery Gates" was stuck in my head for weeks, maybe even months.

I've written much about Dimebag since then, and as Pantera means more to me each year I'm sure there's more to come. But today I want to honor Officer James Niggemeyer. This has not been a good year for police publicity, and I hate that it takes a case like Niggemeyer's to remind me what a noble, risky, heroic and thankless job a cop has.

The Columbus Dispatch released a heartbreaking update on Niggemeyer yesterday, in which he opens up about the counseling he's been going through for post-traumatic stress disorder. I hope you'll read it in its entirety.

Phil Anselmo and Peyton Arens, "Walk"

For a long time, I blamed Phil Anselmo for instigating Pantera's break-up. I winced at his comments in the press, and dismissed him as another incredible musician who was a lousy human being. But watching him respectfully take the high road when Rex Brown trashed him in his book, or consistently offering an olive branch to Vinnie Paul despite Paul's hostility, I've come around to Phil personally (or at least his public image) as well.

This week, Phil Anselmo recruited Peyton Arens, a cancer stricken teenaged-guitarist to play onstage with him through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Peyton chose "Walk," and you can watch him nail it below.



My favorite YouTube comment is "They said the kid was sick? Damn straight he is!"

13 Songs to Ring in 2013

Other than 666, no number is more metal than 13. Its bad luck powers are revealed in musical tributes from several respected metal bands, many of whom have stumbled in mediocre musical salutes to Jason Voorhees' signature number. Better to honor the new year with a drink at the Lucky 13 Saloon than a slog through Cruelty and the Beast.

Few songwriters have survived the 13 curse, and even fewer have done so with a reasonable amount of decibels. Here's a brief audio history of 13.

1. Anvil, "This is Thirteen"

Interestingly, this is where Anvil's luck started to change--thirteen albums into their career, when a coinciding documentary gave them by far the biggest success of their lives. All their talk of wizardry and superstition couldn't hold a candle to watching them get lost and broke in Europe.



2. Anthrax, "13"

What the hell is this? Basically a short exercise for Anthrax's rhythm section, and a reminder that Anthrax were the first good thrash metal band to be intentionally silly on record.



3. Black Flag, "Room 13"

"Keep me alive!" screams 20-year-old Henry Rollins, making that effort sound like a struggle for the last time in his career. "I need to hang on!" is the part that everyone remembers.



4. Cradle of Filth, "Thirteen Autumns and a Widow"

Cruelty and the Beast is often regarded as COF's peak, but even Cradle's best songs are better remembered than reheard. Throw it in the mix for the 13-year-old in all of us.



5. Danizg, "Thirteen"

Written by Danzig originally for Johnny Cash's best studio album, American Recordings. He didn't release his own version until years later on 6:66 Satan's Child. Cash's folky reading and Danzig's goth-blues version both hold up, although it's abundantly clear whom was doing the other one a favor.



6. Megadeth, "Thirteen"

By album number 13, there was no defense of Dave Mustaine's political or social positions, but also no doubt of his chops or longevity.



7. Mercyful Fate, "Thirteen Invitations"

Mercyful Fate's influence on metal was flourishing when they reunited for 1993's In the Shadows. The result suggested that they'd ignored the last ten years of black metal.



8. Motörhead, "Cat Scratch Fever"

"First time that I got it I was thirteen years old," Lemmy amends the lyric in Motörhead's take on Nugent's staple. "Ours knocked his out of the fucking loop--of course, nobody remembers ours," wrote Lemmy in his autobiography. He's half-right.



9. Pantera, "13 Steps to Nowhere"

Anselmo was a good sport to sacrifice his lyrics to a song where all anyone can pay attention to is the drumming. A lesser guitarist than Dimebag would be trampled, but even he knows better than to stand in the way of one of Vinnie Paul's greatest intros.



10. The Pixies, "No. 13 Baby"

Frank Black honors a girl with a special tattoo, who at least had the sense to get it somewhere she can cover up for job interviews.



11. Social Distortion, "Bad Luck"

"Thirteen's my lucky number," laments cowpunk hero Mike Ness in this gem from Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, years before another country crossover would make the same claim. Hey Taylor, is it too late for your to pick a tourmate for next year?



12. Suicidal Tendencies, "Emotion No. 13"

Lights...Camera...Revolution! completed ST's first transition from hardcore to metal, with hits like "You Can't Bring Me Down" and "Send Me Your Money," plus thrashing deep cuts like this one. If "Emotion No. 13" had been released today, it would have taken the e-word back from Chris Carrabba.



13. Venom, "13"

Not bad, actually, out of context with the 300 other Venom songs that sound exactly like it.

Album of the Day: Pantera, Cowboys from Hell

A friend stated yesterday (coincidentally or not, on the 8th anniversary of Dimebag Darrell's murder) that glam-era Pantera was better than the Cowboys in Hell (sic) years. With the band's '80s embarrassments still safely out of print, I'm sure that it's hip to say that they're Pantera's best records. But it's also completely wrong.



The "Cowboys from Hell" title is almost ubiquitous with Pantera now, for good reason. How many modern musicians get honorific nicknames? There isn't anything quite up to the Killer, the Boss or the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. The Cowboys from Hell might be as close as we've gotten. A lesser band wouldn't be able to make that title stick, or even sound cool, but Pantera were experts at the implausible.

22 years on, Cowboys from Hell still gives a charge. It's not nearly Pantera's best record, and it's distractingly frontloaded when it plays out. But in some ways Cowboys captures them at their peak. Phil Anselmo delivers some of the most versatile metal vocals in recorded history here, hitting the high notes like the scion of Rob Halford. He's worlds away for the self-consciously macho growler he'd become. Hearing Vinnie Paul's drumming in 1990 must have been like hearing Eddie Van Halen in 1978--his musicianship would reshape metal, if enough folks could figure out what he was doing, learn it and put their own variation on it. Groove metal has been run into the ground in 2012, with Paul's current band at fault in part, but still no one employs a bass drum and a crash cymbal quite like him. That's why some folks can still sit through 30 seconds of a Hellyeah song.

Every metalhead knows at least two songs from Cowboys from Hell--the title track and "Cemetery Gates." The latter gets played at Dimebag tributes every year, especially on December 8, but even without the boneyard-inspired lyrics it serves as arguably Dime's best memorial. If anyone has an isolated guitar track, please post it in the comments section.



I was surprised to find out today that it's Pantera's longest song, at a short seven minutes (how many Led Zeppelin and Metallica songs are longer than seven minutes? I can't keep track.) If another band has stumbled upon that chorus riff, they probably would have drawn it out for the entire song.

Still, my favorite song from Cowboys from Hell is "Primal Concrete Sledge." Outside of a sole Poison Idea cover, Pantera's punk influences are nearly inaudible. More likely, they raised themselves to the Skynyrd and KISS records that hardcore kids turned up their noses at. Yet some of those faster and shorter concepts seeped through to Pantera, or at least enough for them to unleash blistering songs like this one. Phil Anselmo even calls it "a song of unity" in the video here, thousands of miles away (both musically and graphically) from Operation Ivy. Here's Pantera in 1991 at Monsters of Rock in Moscow, possibly hastening the crumble of the Soviet Union.

Song of the Day: Pantera, "Cat Scratch Fever"

In keeping with yesterday's theme, here's Pantera's take on "Cat Scratch Fever," from the Detroit Rock City soundtrack.



Ted Nugent is someone that I'll defend in the art vs. morality debate, but even musically he gets trumped here. Phil Anselmo's an infinitely better singer, and the Brothers' Abbott's groove knocks Nugent's out of the park. The original sounds thin by comparison.

Perhaps there's no better endorsement than Nugent's himself, who was confronted about the song after dismissing the late Dimebag Darrell for being "foolish enough to take on the nickname of a life-destroying dope product and promote such family-destroying conduct on stage." (Apparently family-destroying conduct is OK if it's off stage.)

"No soul, no balls, no feel. Caucasian all the way," Nugent griped on his web site. "There is no excuse for such horrifically negative, irresponsible, criminal, America-wrecking behavior as such chimp-like substance abuse." Maybe he's jealous, or maybe he's confirming his status as the kind of moralist that rock music is meant to stick it to, but either way it's worth celebrating with Pantera's "Cat Scratch Fever."