Pantera

Far Beyond Driven

Not my thing I guess

Review Score:

(4/10)
I'm not a fan of metal to start with, and Pantera hardly holds up to my ideals of what music should be about. I didn't really mind Vulgar Display of Power, in fact a lot of the riffs impressed me a lot even if the album did sometimes frequently lapse into the territory of metal cliches. I think Billy Corgan once said that Dimebag Darrell is the greatest riff writer in rock music, and I read that Trent Reznor and Flood used to listen to Vulgar Display of Power every day when they were working on Broken. But this CD did nothing for me, they don't seem to be trying to do anything other than be as heavy and agressive as possible. The first song starts out at full throttle and sounds absoultely terrible. There isn't really any experimentation here either, Pantera could really care less about doing anything new, its just them trying to out-heavy their previous albums. Also, I can't take these guys too seriously after finding out they used to be basically an '80's glam/hair band. Not to mention that they're absolutely disgusting, it takes a lot to gross me out but one of their home videos definately did the trick. Maybe that's what metal is all about, I don't know, but it seems way too primitive and immature to me.

Anyhow, I think if this band didn't play straight-up metal and tried their hand at alternative rock or something, they could be pretty good. But this album as it is just does nothing for me, I have no desire to ever listen to it again. The last song is definately my favorite on the album, an almost pretty ballad. If they ever put out an album full of stuff like that, I'll be the first to lay my cash down and buy it. But as far as this album goes...no. I love agressive music, but I just can't stand all the metal cliches and lack of melody. If you want to get into Pantera, check out their first two albums first, they're somewhat better.

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