Pantera

Vulgar Display Of Power

A Confrontation With Prune Hollister

Review Score:

(10/10)
Back in the spring of 1992, I bought Vulgar Display of Power on the same day I purchased Queensryche's Empire. Did your jaw just drop to the floor or what? Two albums that qualify as stone-cold metal classics purchased on the same day!? If I could remember the exact date, I'd petition to turn it into a national holiday. They are that good, trust me. Now on to our story...

A spartanly furnished one-bedroom apartment in the trendy, though crime-ridden, Fan district of Richmond, Virginia. A comfortable seat on the living room couch. A bottle of IBC within arm's reach. `F!cking Hostile' blasting on the stereo. What more can you ask for when you're 21?

Unfortunately, my bliss was soon interrupted by a persistent knocking on the front door. I thought that if I ignored it, perhaps the unwanted caller would take the hint and go away. Sadly, the knocking only grew louder and more insistent. After about 30 seconds, I realized that I was going to have to open the door. I tried to be optimistic - perhaps my visitor was a weary traveler whose only desire was to boost their energies by taking in a little Pantera and IBC. Surely, I could help them with that.

But, when I opened the door, I saw none other than Mrs. Hollister glaring at me. The same raven-haired wench whose husband was my landlord. Let's just say, I was about as likely to share my IBC with Prune Hollister back then as I would be today to share one with Mullah Omar. That woman and her husband had done virtually nothing just a few months earlier when the roof of my bathroom collapsed on me while I was in there. No apologies, no "we hope you don't sue us". They simply acted like it was a routine occurrence and expressed surprise that I found it inconvenient that my bathroom had been reduced to a heap of rubble.

So, you'll understand why I wasn't exactly thrilled to have Prune Hollister up in my grill that fine spring day. "Your music is too loud," she shouted, "Turn it down!"

I just glared back at her, with Phil screaming in the background, "You're making us f!ckin' hostiiile!" In fact, that's exactly what Prune was making me. But, I had to control my rage. I stood there in the doorway silently and when the song came to an end, I nodded blankly at Prune and shut the door. Did I turn down the music? Yes, but only out of respect for my other neighbors - certainly not for Prune, if that's what you're thinking.

So, here I am today, 10 years later, recalling the incident from a spartanly furnished one-bedroom apartment in the trendy and generally low-crime neighborhood of Point Breeze in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My landlord is a tough old guy named Grimes, but he leaves me well enough alone and you can be damn certain that if my bathroom collapsed on me, Grimes would come over and fix it immediately. You can also be pretty sure that, like Prune Hollister, he doesn't care much for Vulgar Display of Power. On the other hand, he might just turn up in the mosh pit the next time Phil and the boys come to town and break out the metal classics from Vulgar like "Mouth for War", "Walk", "No Good (Attack the Radical)", "Regular People (Conceit)", "Hollow", and, of course, "F!cking Hostile". You never know. After all, Vulgar does represent a near perfect fusion of power and thrash metals. And if you listen closely, you can almost hear the beginnings of nu-metal in there as well. But let's not blame Pantera for the creation of that generally execrable genre. Let's simply sit back with our IBCs and enjoy one of the greatest and most influential metal albums ever made.

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