Pantera

Far Beyond Driven

More Vulgar Than "Vulgar" and Hellish Than "From Hell"

Review Score:

(8/10)
Far Beyond Driven is pretty good. It starts off very thrashy, with "Strength Beyond Strength," and continues on in a tidal wave of thermonuclear riffage, guitar slides, thundering double bass drums, and Phil's unmistakable vocal barrage. It closes with an atmospheric cover of Black Sabbath's "Planet Caravan," which is done very well. The album is heavier, faster, and crunchier than Pantera's previous two. However, here's the bad news...

Phil did NOT take time to write good lyrics on here. Compare some of this stuff to Cowboys From Hell's lyrics. Big downgrade. He feels he's got to swear every other word to sound tough. The song "Good Friends..." is so nasty that I took off a whole star for it. We don't need that. Pantera has shown in their previous work that they can sound very tough and swear with a great message in a song, like "F**king Hostile." It has nothing to do with being able to 'handle it'. Mudvayne's L.D. 50 has much more language than this, but the ease that they use it with makes it incredibly tolerable. Also, the music becomes very monotonous after the first 5 or so songs. Highlights are: "Strength Beyond Strength," "Becoming," "I'm Broken," "Throes Of Rejection," and "Planet Caravan."

P.S. I almost gave it a 3, but judging by their earlier stuff, I realized no Pantera CD REALLY deserves less than a 4.

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