Pantera

Reinventing The Steel

Reinventing? Then I shudder to think how stagnant sounds...

Review Score:

(2/10)
Pantera are controversial in the metal genre among fans, but I rather liked all of Cowboys through Far Beyond Driven, although the latter had filler and seemed way too boastful. The Great Southern Trendkill, however, was the phoniest and dullest album the band ever did. Brutality for brutality's sake, and it came off sounding wimpy the whole time. But the album had its moments: "10's" and "Floods" really stood out.

It's too bad this album doesn't have too many moments. I've never heard a band sound so damned bored and formulaic on a CD. My lord, all of these songs follow the same pattern: verse/chorus/verse/guitar solo, then repeat, and the vocal melodies are essentially all the same - horrible knockoffs of Black Crowes or Corrosion of Conformity vocals. Even Dime isn't riffing like he used to, and his solos just aren't cutting it. And the lyrics...let's not even go there. I quote Phil, on the song "Goddamn Electric," "Your trust is in whiskey, ..., and Black Sabbath. It's God Damn Electric." Oh, yea Phil. Whatever that means.

Songs like "Hellbound" suffer from having little of anything noteworthy about them, while "Death Rattle" plods along like a bad Far Beyond Driven outtake. "It Makes Them Disappear" is mildly entertaining, but nothing that the other nu-metal bands haven't done in the last year. In all reality, the only song I really like a lot on this album is "Revolution is My Name" and even that pales in comparison to some of their more noteworthy classics such as "This Love", "Cemetery Gates", or "Hollow".

Throughout the CD, Phil's uninspired vocal approach (don't you remember when on songs like "Mouth for War", his screams actually sounded angry? Not anymore), Dime's lack of interesting riffing (what the hell happened to riffs like those in "Regular People" or "Becoming"?), and an overall disinterest in the band's sound just make this disc so far one of the biggest disappointments of late.

It seems Pantera just doesn't care anymore. If it makes them feel any better, nobody has cared much about them in years either.

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