Essay

Essay: Pantera

Pantera was an American heavy metal band from Arlington, Texas. Their lineup was formed by Phil Anselmo in the lead vocals, Rex Brown in the bass and backing vocals, Dimebag Darrel in guitar and backing vocals and Vinnie Paul in the drums. The band was originally named Pantera's Metal Magic, in 1980 the members of the band agreed to shorten the name to Pantera. In the 80’s Pantera was known for being one of the best trash metal bands in the underground world, their first album was called magic metal and they made regional tours around their city.

Pantera's unique "groove" style came to fruition in its breakthrough album Vulgar Display of Power, released on February 25, 1992. On this album, the power metal falsetto vocals were replaced with a hardcore-influenced shouted delivery and heavier guitar sound. While some critics point to the rise of grunge as the downfall of glam metal, others cite Pantera, most notably Vulgar Display, as being the catalyst that overpowered popular 1980s metal. Among critics and fans, it is frequently cited as the band's best effort. Songs like "Fucking Hostile", a fast, aggressive challenge to authority, the riff-driven "Walk", and "Mouth for War", remain some of the most popular songs in Pantera's catalog. Two other singles from the album became two of Pantera's best-known ballads: "This Love", a haunting piece about lust and abuse, and "Hollow", somewhat reminiscent of "Cemetery Gates" from Cowboys. "Hollow" was recognizable for its popularity at live performances. The band would play the song "Domination" from Cowboys leading into the ending of "Hollow" forming a medley referred to as Hollow, as can be heard on the band's 1997 live album. Singles from Vulgar also received significant airplay on radio as did the companion music videos on MTV. The album entered the American charts at #44. Pantera hit the road again, visiting Japan for the first time in July 1992 and later performing at the "Monsters of Rock" festival co-headlined by Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath in Italy. It was around this time that Darrell Abbott dropped the nickname "Diamond Darrell" and assumed "Dimebag Darrell", and Rex Brown dropped the pseudonym "Rexx Rocker".

During the mid 80’s Pantera released their second album called projects in the jungle in which their music style turned from glam metal to a heavier gender called trash metal. Some years later they released “I Am the Night” an album with a much heavier sound that sold 25,000 copies.

A compilation of all their best songs is in an album called Official Live: Pantera 101 Proof The drummer of the band called vinny talked about this album and said “We just felt that after four studio albums, and years of non-stop touring, we'd see all these fans at our in-store [appearances] and they'd be like, “when are you putting out a live album?” So we decided to start working on this live album. We just felt like, let's try to give something back to the fans, and make the very best valued product that we can. So instead of doing a big double CD, or box set, or something that's gonna cost a lot of money, we went for, as cheap as possible, and to make it that much more special too, we went and did two new studio tracks [“Where You Come From” & “I Can't Hide,”] right before we went on the Ozzfest.”

During these early years Pantera started to develop their musical style but their music wasn’t good enough until a new member joined the band to be the lead vocalist his name was Phil Anselmo in 1987. Anselmo had previously been the vocalist for the bands Samhain and Razorwhite. In 1988, Pantera released its first album with Anselmo, entitled Power Metal. By far the band's heaviest album at this point, with lot of trash influence from Many bands of the time style such as Metallica's Master of Puppets, Slayer's Reign in Blood, Anthrax's Among the Living and Megadeth's Peace Sells... but Who's Buying? Anselmo marked the beginning of a new style in the band and he is considered one of the best heavy metal vocalists.

Finally Pantera has passed to history thanks to its great music and style and has left a great legacy full of influences in their music style also has come along with a huge quantity of fans and many people consider this great metal ban a legend, a “MONSTER OF ROCK”