PANTERA
Pantera was an American heavy metal band from Arlington, Texas. The group was formed in 1981 by the Abbott brothers – drummer Vinnie Paul and guitarist Dimebag Darrell – along with vocalist Terry Glaze. Bassist Rex Brown joined the band the following year, replacing the original unofficial bass guitarist Tommy D. Bradford. Having started as a glam metal band, Pantera released four albums during the 1980’s. Looking for a new and heavier sound, Pantera replaced Glaze with Phil Anselmo in 1987. With its fifth album, 1990’s Cowboys from Hell, Pantera introduced a groove metal sound. Far Beyond Driven (1994) debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. (More from Wikipedia)
As what I think of as alternative rock began to run out of gas in the 1990’s, the next movement was sometimes called modern rock (though I hear few references to that term anymore), which featured bands and artists like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, Pantera, and others. A lot of these bands created a combustible mixture of heavy metal and rap music, and one in particular I really liked, Rage Against the Machine. Besides casting the existing heavy metal scene as a bunch of wimps, they giddily sought to overturn every connection to earlier forms of rock music and, for a time at least, appeared to be poised to sweep aside the rock establishment altogether. The movement seemed to me to rise and fall rather quickly, but frankly, those artists never really spoke to me except on a few stray tracks.
(January 2013)
