Pantera - Cowboys from Hell

Starting out as glam-metal followers, these Texans pointed the way for much of the metal of the late millennium after a sensational transformation. Their career, however, came to the most tragic of endings. Here is the story of the first and second life of the cowboys from hell

by Antonio Silvestri

It's a hypnotic electric guitar riff, distorted and warped, that introduces the track, and for ten seconds it's the sole protagonist; then comes the counterpoint of a second electric guitar, a studded version of the old call-and-response, raising the anticipation of the drums: what's about to happen? Not even twenty seconds in, a bone-crushing groove takes shape, developing through palm-muting and staccato power chords, while a werewolf-like voice spits out the lyrics ("You see us coming and you all together run for cover/ We're taking over this town"), tearing into screams that still echo the primal thrash-metal, the kind clearly descended from hardcore punk. You can almost smell the acrid stench of spilled gasoline, a pool of fuel spreading out as it waits for a spark to set off a blaze that looks a lot like an explosion: then comes the fuse, a frenzied electric guitar solo, ascending and over-the-top, which out of dust and sweat unexpectedly opens onto a glimpse of starry sky; it's a fleeting vision, before the fight resumes against the murderous gravity of an earth-shaking groove, a rhythmic cage in which the voice is a caged animal and nothing escapes the cyclical regularity of the drum blows, struck with homicidal fury but also essential precision. One last threat remains, screamed into the microphone before the final skirmish: "Step aside for the Cowboys from Hell".

It's July 24, 1990, the day Texans Pantera release their Cowboys From Hell, and the song described above is the first of the twelve tracks that make up the album. For many fans, this is the band's true debut, and those four minutes of groove-metal are the band's declaration of war on the metal world. Even the band itself, in some interviews, has stated that the four previous albums - the first dating all the way back to 1983 - should be considered something separate from this, their fifth studio effort. This is certainly one of the most incredible and significant transformations in metal history, more a refounding than a simple shift, so much so that it drew the ire of fellow band Exhorder, who for a long time unfairly accused the Texans of copying their style. Before returning to the bone-crushing gallop of Cowboys From Hell, the album that introduced Pantera to metalheads worldwide and indelibly marked a certain strand of Nineties music, let's find out where the band came from - that much-maligned seven-year span so thoroughly forgotten by almost everyone.

Pantera before Pantera: from their founding to Mark Ross's dropped jaw

The prehistory tells of a Texan band struggling to find its name: first Gemini, then Eternity, and finally, the far more effective Pantera. It was founded by Vinnie Paul Abbott on drums and Darrell "Diamond Darrell" Abbott on lead guitar, joined by Terry Glaze on rhythm guitar. With no bassist, Tommy D. Bradford began playing with them, and with no singer either, the role was briefly filled by Donny Hart. In 1982, with Hart's departure and Glaze stepping up to vocals (leaving Darrell as sole guitarist), and with the arrival of Rex Brown as official bassist, the lineup could finally be called stable.

The young band made a name for themselves across the southern states, including their native Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. They supported acts like the devoutly Christian Stryper and other glam-metal outfits such as Dokken and Quiet Riot.

When they managed to release their debut album, the young and inexperienced Pantera seemed intent on slotting into the then-fashionable glam-metal scene in the least creative way possible, filling Metal Magic (1983) with winks to Kiss and Mötley Crüe, alongside the classic influence of Judas Priest. Everything, from the recording quality to the extreme kitsch of the keyboards, not to mention the clunky cover art, betrays the band's immaturity. Hardly surprising, given that the two Abbott brothers, Darrell and Vinnie, were just 16 and 19 years old at the time. A closer listen, however, already reveals Darrell's immense talent, who lights up the otherwise bland tracklist as best he can with solos that are more than respectable - indeed astonishing, considering his age.

Released on their own label, also called Metal Magic, and produced by their father Jerry Abbott, this debut never fails to surprise less-informed listeners, revealing a band that bears very little resemblance to the same-named outfit that would become famous seven years later.

The second album, Projects In The Jungle (1984), shows a marked improvement, with more dynamic compositions still clearly inspired by the era's biggest acts, particularly Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe. Against the overall generic banality stands, once again, the increasingly mature virtuosity of Diamond Darrell, showcased on "Like Fire" and throughout the album's many solos, which invite comparisons with top-tier guitar heroes like Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads.

One apparent weak point is instead Terry Glaze's voice, very much tied to the sound of the early part of the decade - closer to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest than to the new, thrilling and immensely powerful sound of thrash metal that Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth were coining and perfecting during that very period. The third album, I Am The Night (1985), also retains the limitations of its two predecessors, marking yet another noticeable but still insufficient improvement, one that relegates this early incarnation of Pantera to the status of a minor late glam-metal band.

Then, finally, something seems to change. The Abbott brothers become fascinated by the landmark Metallica and Slayer albums of the period. In particular, it's "Ride The Lightning" (1984) that wins over Diamond Darrell, with its push toward a new, increasingly intricate and spectacular way of approaching thrash metal. Terry Glaze has no desire to steer toward a more guitar-driven sound, and would rather carry on without leaning into such extremity. The resulting rift leads to the singer's departure in 1986, a pivotal year for heavy metal as a whole.

He's replaced by Philip Hansen Anselmo, 19 years old and with some experience in second-tier bands. The new singer's far more aggressive style greatly aids Pantera's transition toward a classic transitional album, Power Metal (1988), poised halfway between thrash metal and glam metal.

While "Rock The World" and "Proud To Be Loud" still speak the language of the earlier albums, the track "Power Metal" already fuses the English school with the speed of Anthrax, and "Over And Out" has far more in common with Germany's Sodom than with the polished Def Leppard. They don't yet shine with originality, and seem to be chasing trends rather than setting them, but the time is finally ripe for the next record to be the real turning point.

It proves difficult, however, to convince any label to believe in the Texans, and between 1988 and 1989 the band is turned down by no fewer than 28 labels. The turning point comes when Mark Ross, representing Atco Records, sees Pantera perform live and is utterly floored, as he himself recounted in the liner notes for the 20th-anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell:

By the end of the first song, my jaw was on the floor. The sheer sonic power of it all - the attitude and the musicality - blew me away. Basically, you had to be an idiot not to think they were amazing. I mean, how could you watch these guys and not think, 'Holy shit!?'

The history of Pantera would never be the same again. Among the first to realize it was Dave Mustaine, who invited Diamond Darrell to join Megadeth - an offer Darrell was only willing to accept if it also included his brother Vinnie Paul: it came to nothing, and one of metal's proverbial sliding doors closed.

The arrival of the cowboys from hell: the long-awaited success and the big shows

Producing duties go to Terry Date, who had already worked with Overkill, and in the meantime Pantera change their image, becoming practically a different band. They move as far as possible from the glam-metal of their early days, made of spandex and flashy hairstyles, preferring more genuine and far less polished references, to the point that it's not uncommon to find the band drawing heavily on Southern imagery, not without some of its rhetoric and baser elements: desert dust, cowboys as local heroes, booze and other drugs, the vastness of American space in which to get lost and find oneself again, religion as a unifying shared value, the flag of the Confederate States, and the unsavory accusations of white supremacist sympathies. It's no coincidence that the nickname "Diamond" Darrell would also transform by 1992 into "Dimebag", severing any connection to Kiss and their "Black Diamond".

It's not just a change of image, but also a profound transformation of the sound, which leans on the power of groove and hinges on increasingly spectacular guitar virtuosity. Aggressive, precise, and often capable of exploring midtempo without chasing the obsession with speed shared by so many peers, this filthy, nasty, brutal thrash-metal proves fundamental to the birth of so-called groove-metal and, indirectly, helps point the way for much of the new heavy-metal of the nineties. After all, Pantera are able to record this Cowboys From Hell by working meticulously and drawing on everything they'd learned thanks to their by-now considerable experience. It's bassist Rex Brown himself who recalls the sessions from that period in "Guitar World":

"While we were writing the songs for 'Cowboys From Hell', we were listening to a lot of different kinds of music, a lot of Metallica, Slayer, Mercyful Fate and Minor Threat, and that changed our sound. (…) Since we no longer had to play six shows a night, we had more time to spend in the studio […] and we became total perfectionists. […] If something wasn't right, we'd take a razor blade and cut and splice the tape. We didn't have Pro Tools back then. And it's that [process] that created our distinctive sound, where the guitar and bass are just perfect. […] Playing with Pantera back then was even better. We were great friends and our chemistry was undeniable. We were all working together with Terry Date, who we liked a lot [and] with whom we bonded right from the start."

Opening the album is the title track mentioned earlier, an anthem and a manifesto all at once, a triple dose of aggression and power. Next, a bridge between thrash-metal and industrial-metal is launched by the frenetic "Primal Concrete Sledge", with its stuttering delivery that foreshadows something of the band's future rap-metal moments. Even more spectacular is the slaughter of "Psycho Holiday", an articulated track that strings together bursts of groove-metal violence interspersed with instrumental whirlwinds and more melodic lulls, including a curious solo somewhere between blues and speed-metal. More conventional is the thrash-metal of "Heresy", which explores the continuum between Judas Priest and Metallica.

The peak arrives with the most celebrated and moving track in the band's entire discography, "Cemetery Gates": a long seven-minute power-ballad that serves to showcase Phil Anselmo's exceptional vocal gifts, here working in his upper register, alongside the stunning pairing with Dimebag Darrell's spectacular, poetic guitar playing. The long final climax and the alternation between classic semi-acoustic rock and a thunderous yet composed heavy-metal, combined with the romantic, tragic lyrics, make it a track of enormous emotional impact, one that can even be forgiven a certain triteness in its well-worn theme of a lover's death and romantic torment.

It's no coincidence that this very track would be chosen to commemorate the tragic death of Dimebag Darrell, which we'll discuss in more detail later, during the "Gigantour" organized by Dave Mustaine in 2005. Performed for the occasion by Dream Theater, the moving tribute cover also features Russell Allen of Symphony X, Burton C. Bell, and Dave Mustaine himself on the final solo, and stands as one of the most touching moments in the history of metal.

Almost as if to offset all the poetry of "Cemetery Gates", Pantera immediately follow it with "Domination", a bone-crushing assault of thrash-groove-metal that is above all a chance to highlight the central role of drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, here engaged in a technically demanding exercise that is nonetheless driven by furious energy, as best shown by that iconic scream at the start of the track ("First take, like a motherfucker"). Phil Anselmo delivers another possessed vocal performance, and of course Dimebag Darrell doesn't miss the chance for another stellar solo, but the long, slowed-down final coda also deserves attention, a show of power that remains terrifying to this day.

After a pair of central tracks as different as they are important, the Texans return to speed-metal territory ("Shattered") and thrash-metal ("Clash With Reality"), before engaging with industrial-metal on the darker, more mechanical "Medicine Man", and crafting another complex rhythmic exercise in "Message In Blood".

Worth mentioning too is the closing "The Art Of Shredding", which ideally returns to where the album began, in the uncompromising power of visceral heavy-metal.

The first Pantera album to appear on a Billboard chart, it would only go platinum at home over time. Having appeared somewhat unexpectedly on the radar of metal's biggest names, the Texans found themselves opening for giants like Judas Priest, Metallica, Ac/Dc, Mötley Crüe, and sharing the stage with Exodus and Suicidal Tendencies.

Power and Groove: The Years of Definitive Consecration

After Cowboys From Hell, it's fair to wonder whether the band will keep following the path they'd taken, or perhaps try to combine their new sound with even greater mainstream success. If, with hindsight, the 1990 album marked a decisive turning point in their career, it's also true that it's a success that doesn't catch fire too quickly, one still in need of confirmation.

For their sixth album, Vulgar Display Of Power (1992), Terry Date returns to produce, and the Texans decide to steer clear of the kind of mainstream compromise Metallica had reached with the so-called "Black Album" (1991), pushing power to the absolute maximum. With the goal of recording a work that would establish them as new standard-bearers of metal extremism in mind, they avoid more classic touches like Phil Anselmo's falsetto, opt for even more deafening volumes, and push toward a mechanical, brutal sound. Presenting it all is a cover that makes things clear right away: a close-up of a man's face as he's punched in it. Yes, they were never exactly masters of elegance.

The 11 tracks are a parade of brutality, which scale back the thrash-metal component and institutionalize their groove-metal. Anselmo abandons the falsetto in favor of a hardcore scream and occasional roars, as heard on the opening "Mouth Of War" and the furious blaze of "Fucking Hostile", but once again it's the interplay between the Abbott brothers that gives the rhythmic emphasis typical of their work to tracks like "A New Level", "Rise", "No Good", "Regular People", and also to the new "Cemetery Gates"-style ballad titled "This Love".

Closing things out is the less aggressive "Hollow", with its long semi-acoustic opening and a second half more typical of their usual style.

The single "Walk" is perhaps the only hit in groove-metal history, or the closest thing to one: it reaches #35 on the UK chart and brushes up against the Billboard Hot 100.

Generally celebrated as their peak, Vulgar Display Of Power is above all a confirmation of the band's talent, as they refine their formula by choosing the path of pure, undiluted power. In doing so, Pantera also build a bridge to the rhythmic emphasis of hip-hop, giving more than a few pointers to the crossover experiments of the late millennium. It lacks the redemptive epic of Cowboys From Hell, and the magic of being a transitional album between two decades and two very different eras of heavy metal, but it remains to this day their most celebrated and best-remembered work, bolstered by double-platinum status in the United States and excellent commercial results in Australia, Canada and the UK.

For their seventh album, Far Beyond Driven (1994), they opted for a questionable cover depicting an anus being drilled in close-up, later appropriately swapped for a more sober skull about to be pierced. It's the last work before the band's crisis, interpersonal before musical. Phil Anselmo had begun suffering severe back pain, which he fought by abusing alcohol and heroin. Paradoxically, the album's success is one of the causes of this slide into addiction, as the singer stated in a 2009 interview at Loyola University:

I think it was around the time the record ['Far Beyond Driven'] hit number one. I was pretty terrified. I was happy as hell; don't get me wrong, man – I was like, 'Oh my God, yes!' At that point, I'd just gotten back from the doctor – after having my second MRI – and I realized I had two blown discs. Now, in order to be this Superman the media had built up, I had to sedate that pain. So I started with ordinary painkillers and muscle relaxants. Eventually you work your way up the painkiller ladder, because painkillers lie to you; they'll magnify that pain. And that's all you think about: the pain and the painkillers.

Pantera shot to number one on the Billboard chart, and Far Beyond Driven became their last album to feel in some way complete, as what followed would only be more confused works born of troubled gestation.

It's the apotheosis of their rage, with the old-time fun now a distant memory. "Strength Beyond Strength" and "Slaughtered" highlight how this version of Pantera has an affinity with metalcore, similar in its numbing intensity.

If Anselmo is more tormented than ever, flattened into a toxic machismo made of menacing tones and virile roars or anguished screams, the Abbott brothers keep weaving cadenced grooves and metallic fury with inexhaustible dedication, as shown by tracks like "5 Minutes Alone," "Good Friends And A Bottle Of Pills" and "Shedding Skin."

At the very least "I'm Broken," a new "Walk," deserves a place in the anthology of their best tracks, an armor-plated rap-metal number with yet another virtuoso solo. It's harder for the band to live up to the elaborate tracks of the past: "Hard Lines Sunken Cheeks" doesn't have enough fuel to sustain its seven minutes. "Planet Caravan," a Black Sabbath cover, arrives like a balm: a psychedelic spell that is restraint after excess, poetry after the bombardment.

The album goes platinum at home and in Canada, confirming the excellent response from the public, and "I'm Broken" even earns Pantera a Grammy nomination for "Best Metal Performance" in 1995.

Crisis and decline: Anselmo's overdose and the breakup

The promotional tour for Far Beyond Driven leads to tensions with Kerrang! journalists, then Anselmo is accused of assaulting a security guard and becomes increasingly unstable: he slanders rap as a whole, accusing it of inciting the murder of white people, then throws himself into the most important of his many side projects, Down. This band had already brought together, since 1991, Pepper Keenan of Corrosion Of Conformity, Crowbar's Todd Strange and Kirk Windstein, as well as Eyehategod drummer Jimmy Bower. After four years on the underground circuit, it's their debut "NOLA" (1995, the title standing for New Orleans, Louisiana) that introduces them to a wider audience through a powerful hybrid of sludge-metal and stoner-metal, recovering a blues-rock soul through Southern inflections. Great fun for fans of this kind of sound, but nothing particularly original: more a romp among seasoned musicians than a search for a new way of making heavy metal, as later confirmed by "Down II: A Bustle In Your Hedgerow" (2002) and again "Down III: Over the Under" (2007), punctuated by long breaks and lineup changes.

For their eighth album, The Great Southern Trendkill (1996), which would sell more than a million copies at home, Phil Anselmo recorded separately from the rest of the band and took the opportunity to scream at length, often at ear-splitting volumes. An ideal exasperation of the most aggressive side of their previous albums, it's an uncompromising work that also recovers a manic speed ("The Great Southern Trendkill") while doubling down on the groove-metal they helped coin (especially "War Nerve").

When they turn more emotional, as on "10's," the result is a desolate, depressive picture, haunted by terrible psychic ghosts not too different from those that plague certain Alice In Chains records. When they experiment with electronics, it mostly comes across as a device to pad things out.

That this is an album marked by the band's interpersonal and personal crisis is confirmed by the two "Suicide Note" tracks placed at the center of the running order: first a ballad of pain, then a groove-metal bloodbath with manic accelerations bordering on grindcore.

Shining above everything, however, is Dimebag Darrell's guitar work, unmatched on the long power-ballad "Floods", where he delivers an unforgettable solo for the history books.

On July 13, 1996, Anselmo overdoses on heroin, nearly dying. Meanwhile, the band has become one of the biggest names in all of Nineties heavy metal, and it's the right moment to release Official Live: 101 Proof (1997), an excellent testament to the devastating power of the band on stage. In the meantime, the first multi-platinum sales certifications arrive, along with two more Grammy nominations (for the first part of "Suicide Note" and the live version of "Cemetery Gates").

Headliners at "Ozzfest" in 1997, with Anselmo distracted by numerous solo projects, Pantera return to the studio in 1999 and the following year release their ninth and final album, Reinventing The Steel (2000).

Opening with "Hellbound", which quotes "Cowboys From Hell" — not exactly a forward-looking idea — the Texans' final studio work offers no great surprises. By this point, the groove-metal of the two singles "Goddamn Electric" and "Revolution Is My Name" (which earns another Grammy nomination) is business as usual, an enjoyable exercise in headbanging for any fan but hardly better than one of their classics. That this is an end-of-career work is also confirmed by "I'll Cast A Shadow", apparently a self-celebration of their own influence on the genre and their place in metal history.

These are, in fact, the last gasps before the final breakup. After further major live shows between 2000 and 2001, the final concert takes place in Yokohama, Japan.

A tenth album is planned, but Anselmo drifts away to release music with the aforementioned Down as well as with Superjoint Ritual. The Abbott brothers realize that the long hiatus is in fact a definitive end for the band, the logical conclusion of a long and painful crisis, so in November 2003 they disband the group they had founded more than twenty years earlier. In an embarrassing escalation, an increasingly erratic Phil Anselmo claims that Dimebag Darrell deserved a good beating.

The tragic epilogue: the night at the Columbus

The Abbott brothers form Damageplan, who go on to release only one debut album, "New Found Power" (2004), a groove-metal record that doesn't stray far from what Pantera had already done. More than for its artistic merits, though, the Damageplan name will go down in metal history for a far more tragic reason: it's at one of their concerts, on December 8, 2004, in Columbus, Ohio, that Nathan Gale takes the stage and shoots dead Dimebag Darrell and three other people, wounding two more, before being killed himself by a police officer. The motives behind the attack remain unknown to this day. Dimebag Darrell is buried with one of Eddie Van Halen's guitars, in a Kiss-themed coffin, to the general bewilderment of metal fans everywhere.

It's a terrible end, one that robs every music lover of one of the greatest heavy-metal guitarists of all time, at just 38 years old. His style reshaped heavy-metal guitar for the turn of the millennium, influencing the sound of bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Hatebreed and Lamb Of God. With his death, there is no longer any possibility of telling the story of Pantera, a band born and shaped around the artistic and family bond between the two Abbott brothers. In a 2012 interview about a possible reunion under the band's historic name, Vinnie Paul bluntly settles the matter: it would only be possible if Dimebag Darrell were still alive. The ongoing speculation from fans and magazines proves groundless, and perhaps serves only to exorcize the pain of an unjust, premature death. Pantera's end seems, if anything, even more definitive after Vinnie Paul himself dies on June 22, 2018, at the age of 54. All that remains to us are their songs, forever.

Believe the word, I will unlock my door

And pass the cemetery gates

Ride the wave of great music

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

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Pantera on OndaRock

Discography

Metal Magic (Metal Magic, 1983)
Projects In The Jungle (Metal Magic, 1984)
I Am The Night (Metal Magic, 1985)
Power Metal (Metal Magic, 1988)
Cowboys From Hell (Atlantic, 1990)
Vulgar Display Of Power (East West, 1992)
Far Beyond Driven (East West, 1994)
The Great Southern Trendkill (East West, 1996)
Official Live: 101 Proof (live, East West, 1997)
Reinventing The Steel (East West, 2000)