Phil Anselmo on the Smiths

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!"

Pantera, "Hellbound"

"Hell ain't a bad place to be," the polemicist Bon Scott tells us in his Let There Be Rock dissertation. As usual, he was being understated. Hell is the most metal place in the universe, as emphasized by Slayer's waiting, Venom's welcome and Stryper inviting the Devil there. Ozzy and Lemmy both went a-raising, right on the same song. Some of metal's finest documents start in the underworld, or at least right next door, including AC/DC's two best albums, Megadeth's most violent junkie dream and Guns N' Roses two-CD loose cannon. But no one ever made it sound louder or angrier than Pantera.

Pantera dominated the '90s as the world's best and biggest metal band, just as Black Sabbath ran the '70s and Metallica owned the '80s. They kicked off the decade by introducing themselves as the Cowboys From Hell, but bookended it by dragging us back home with them on their final album.



Even when Dimebag was still alive, there was much uncertainty as to whether we'd ever see another Pantera album. Every Pantera fan who read about them in metal mags (and if you were a Pantera fan, you absolutely read metal mags) knew that there was infighting between Phil Anselmo and the Brothers Abbott. It had been four years since The Great Southern Trendkill, years in which mainstream metal had been reoccupied by Korn and Limp Bizkit. But on the wonderfully preposterously-titled Reinventing the Steel, Pantera outsavaged not only the nu-metal legions, but more importantly their own storied career.

"Hellbound" is a band at their most ruthless, throwing all of their brutality into their last testament while still hanging on the the grooves. Phil Anselmo's banshee scream in the chorus is the stuff of immortals. He couldn't keep it much longer, as his voice settled into its present-day baritone, and the band couldn't even stay together after the Reinventing the Steel tour, with Phil Anselmo famously telling Metal Hammer "Dimebag Darrell deserves to be beaten severely." That quote was run on the magazine's cover one week before Darrell was killed by a gunman.

Pantera may have no longer been friends on Reinventing the Steel, but by Satan's graces they were still a band. If Hell really is other people, than I'm glad Pantera chose to leave the tape rolling.

Kelley Deal, "Fucking Hostile"

Few songs have ever left a bigger mark on me than Pantera's "Fucking Hostile," which gave me my first impression of metal that wasn't on the radio and eventually featured in the introduction to my first book. I still hear it the same way that I did in sixth grade, but I barely hear it at all in Kelley Deal of the Breeders' version, recorded for the Free the West Memphis 3 benefit album.



I love the sludge pacing, all the bizarro outbursts in the background (who are those people?) and the restructuring of the verses and chorus. Deal's composed delivery is at the other end of Phil Anselmo's unhinged barking, and hearing this work so well makes me appreciate both of them more. The latter's lyrics, usually seen as anti-intellectual, sound abstract and surreal in Deal's voice. I never thought of Deal as much of an interpreter, but I'd pick up an entire album of her metal covers.

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, "Suicide Note, Part 1 & 2"

On The Great Southern Trendkill, Pantera's Phil Anselmo and Dimebag Darrell were fighting too much to record in the same studio. Darrell was taking out his aggression with alcohol and cars, Anselmo was months away from a heroin overdose. Yet, like the great artists that they were, the band channeled that tension into their most extreme record to date, taking the "experimental fourth album" idea further than nearly any of their metal forefathers.

"Suicide Note, Part 1" starts with effects, over-dubbing and balladry--nothing that one normally associates with Pantera--and wordlessly references Zeppelin in away that reminds me of Neil Young's shout out to the Stones in "Borrowed Tune". But then the sequel abruptly kicks the first one out, as if to remind you that Darrell and Anselmo were not just holding on to life, they were throttling it. Heard together, "Suicide Note, Part 1 & 2" documents a band fighting itself off the edge. But they also depict a light that not enough people get to.

For Gradison, 1983-2012.

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."