Vinnie Paul Retrospective Part IV - The Great Southern Trendkill
It's weird that I'm not really mentioning the drums in this Vinnie Paul retrospective. It's not just that it's a Vinnie thing or that I'm a drummer, but Dime & Vinnie are most of the music. There's a few times Rex gets his two cents in, but he usually just plays his role. The vocals I always tended to tune out a bit because truth be told I've always found Phil to be hit or miss. Presence? Yes. Delivery? Eh, not always off, but more questionable choices than there should be. Lyrics? A good 40 percent of them are outright dumb, then and now.
This process is teaching me about how I review. If I've heard an album a million times, the music is usually less the focus. The review tends to be more about my relationship with the music (with random factoids sprinkled in so they don't just take up space in my brain). I don't know if that's as useful to the reader, but these are all what comes to me when I sit down to write, not trying to tick boxes and discuss specific criteria. I still talk about the music, but it becomes harder to describe. Kinda like tying your shoes. It's something you do without thinking every day, but stop to think about it while you're doing it and you're fucked.
Point is, I'm just not thinking about the drums as much, even though Vinnie Paul was low key incredible his whole career. Which is kind of it, isn't it? He's the ultimate pocket guy. He serves the song and even if he's going ham, it's because it's necessary. I could have dissected the cool kickdrum pattern he rattles off on "Becoming", but I don't know much about technique (being self-taught and all), I could never play that in a thousand years because I'm not great with my feet and it doesn't make for the best reading when you break it down. Here and there, yes; if it added flavor to the piece, sure. But I'm gonna do the pocket thing as best I can. (Which ain't much, since I'm the king of parentheticals and pointless asides. I even edit these, but I have a hard time cutting my children, y'know? Fuck the sappy shit; let's scream into the void with:)
THE GREAT SOUTHERN TRENDKILL (1996) **** and 1/8
This is a weird record. Think about it. It's got death metal thrash, a cowbell driven groove single, swing rhythms, a frickin' "Wanted Dead Or Alive" sound-alike smack dab in the middle, weird keyboard interludes with subliminal vocal ASMR (man that sets off my douche-chills) a seven minute epic with a solo most call Dimebag's best and closes with two songs that tune down to G six years before Meshuggah did. All in 11 songs.
Let's unpack that a bit: The title track scorches the Earth from the get-go, unleashing Phil Anselmo and guest vocalist Seth Putnam's voice-destroying cries of rage. And I mean that literally: you can hear Phil's voice disintegrate over the course of the record. It also has Dimebag Darrel's most underrated solo for the last 90 seconds of runtime.
"War Nerve" has like eight different parts during less than five minutes of existence. Cliché screeds against the media aside, this song is pretty killer. The section where Vinnie goes hard on the toms about 2/3rds of the way in and Dime palm mutes in unison is the shit.
"Drag The Waters" has lame lyrics and it's not exciting or anything, but as a straight ahead hard rock song it works for me. I think because Dime adds so much character with his playing. "10's" has always been a bit underwhelming, but the title refers to the smallest measure of heroin you can buy so the fact that it feels "morose and old" was probably intentional. (Side note: It was featured in a 2003 Dragonball Z movie! What a weird choice!)
"13 Steps To Nowhere" is fucking rad musically. It's got one of my favorite Vinnie Paul drum patterns. The whole intro is just dope. The verses lean hard on the agro, some real fist pumping shit there. Then you realize the lyrics are...
When we were kids, we bumped this shit either because a) we thought this was illustrating a problematic situation that needed solving, b) it was trying to be over the top with its imagery because being an edgelord was an acceptable pastime back then or c) we didn't think about the lyrics because metal is rad and who cares what they're saying as long as it slams? Take your pick. But here's the second verse:
"A backwards swastika
The black skin riddled in lead
A Nazi Gangster Jew
It beats a dog that's dead
It's in to use the slang
Outbreak of gun roulette
The cross slants to the side
We'll prove the damnedest yet"
We used to laugh at the line "Nazi gangster Jew" because those three words strung together just sound so dumb and didn't think that could possibly be a thing. I'm still not sure what the fuck it is; it sounds ridiculous. But that verse put into context with the man who wrote it is enough to turn my stomach. It's an ugly side of humanity I don't want to think about. Does that invalidate it as art? No. Art is expression of the human condition and people have ugly feelings. We might think those people are wrong, but they still feel those feelings and they use art to express them. But it's my freedom of expression to tell a dude who says this kind of shit to fuck off, so...fuck off.
"Suicide Note Pt. 1" is an acoustic Bon Jovi sounding thing in the middle of this maelstrom. It's about someone who either gets caught before they can go through with a suicide attempt or failed one recently and don't have the energy to try again tonight, so they'll wait. They know their train's a comin' soon.
"Suicide Note Pt. 2" is an accurate description of the intense rush of someone screaming so hard because they're trying to make their own head explode. It's a harrowing illustration of anger so intense that you start to inflict violence on yourself. You get caught up in the fervor. You're using that intensity to block out your rational mind because you hate yourself so much you just want your limbic brain to give you permission to lose control and bypass your self-preservation mechanisms and do something you can't take back. So yeah, I can say from experience they get it right. The grindy part at the end when you're so drained from all the energy you throw into it that all you have left is an empty hum is a little off. It's less aggressive than that, more a stream of sobbing punctuated with "Don't look at me!" and "Leave me alone!" (even if you are alone) but that wouldn't have fit the song.
"Living Through Me" is a self-reflection after the scary episodes in the few songs prior. "Drop the needle / And stop what your changing into" it says. The chorus describes a laundry list of fucked up things that have become mundane in the life of an addict. And the line "Now you're living through me" is not spoken by Anselmo: it's spoken by heroin. Also that weird, slithery breakdown where everything grinds to a halt to get doped up for a minute. Never liked that part, but this time through I got the atmosphere of it for the first time in 21 years of listening to it, so...eh?
"Floods" is a lot to take in. It starts as an acoustic number , features singing (there's more of it than I remember on this record, actually) instead of screaming the top of his head off, and some tasty chords with ninths and shit. Then the breakdown is pretty grindy, but the piece du-resistance is Dimebag's solo. It wasn't until I was listening to it at a cookout this past weekend when I heard Rex Brown's bass part during that part. You wanna talk about tasty, holy shit man. Rex delivered. The solo itself is a masterclass in how to melt souls. Fuck melting faces; this shit will melt your soul. Then back to the breakdown and the outro arpeggio thing that puts the perfect button on this suite. People tend to shit on bands for clean singing and putting melodic parts in their otherwise brutal records, but "Cemetery Gate" and "Floods" are two of Pantera's most revered songs. And they're awesome because of melody.
"The Underground In America" has some woefully disastrous lyrics, but it's still kind of fun. Also, for 1996 this was relatively unexplored territory as far as low tuning. Drop G was nutsacks scraping the ground low back then; Korn only tuned down to A by that point, and even most de-tuned bands of the time didn't venture past B. Fun fact: G is about as low as you can tune a bass guitar and still have it be audible. Even then you can only kind of hear it, so for those out there crying for a twelve string guitar that goes down an octave below a bass guitar, I've got some bad news for you.
What were we talking about? Oh yeah. The only other thing that jumps out at me from "The Underground" is the line "Lesbian love is accepted and liked". Meant to be an edgy, in-your-face statement to middle America about how transgressive their scene is, it comes off as oddly progressive now until you remember the source and somethingsomething male gaze.
"Underground" has a prolonged ending with some weird noises and ringing out guitars and Phil screaming "The Trend. Is. DEAD." until the last track "(Repirse) Sandblasted Skin" starts. It's basically the same song, but with lyrics so cheap they're on sale at the "fucking dollar store". It's the band jamming out ideas they couldn't fit into the previous song. It's the more musically adventurous of the two, which saves it from being an unnecessary footnote to a record without a proper ending. Instead, it brings the proceedings to a properly pummeling conclusion.
"The Great Southern Trendkill" is a raw, unflinching and overlooked...oh shit, this song's fading back in? Damn. Are we...okay, I guess they're done. That was...so 90's, wasn't it? Fucking bonus tracks.
Anyway, I liked this album a helluva lot more than I maybe ever did listening back to it this time. I always thought this was the weak link because of all its detours, but it may be the bands most interesting because of them. Not best, but most interesting. They tried shit they would unfortunately never try again. They pushed things as far as they were probably going to go. And for that I salute them.
But pushing things too far would have consequences. Phil Anselmo would be clinically dead for four to five minutes on stage during the subsequent tour after a heroin overdose. He got hooked on pain pills because of two herniated discs in his back and felt like he couldn't take time off to fix them because Pantera needed to keep going. Phil wouldn't get back surgery until 2005 because doctors refused to operate on him unless he stopped using hard drugs beforehand.
Tensions between Anselmo and the band were at an all time high. He didn't even record the vocals of "Trendkill" with the band. They tracked it in Texas and Anselmo did his parts at Trent Reznor's studio in New Orleans. They got in the studio and did two songs for the 1997 live album to put on as a reason to buy it, but after that things kept being sour and distant.
Join us next time for the conclusion of the Pantera years: "Reinventing The Steel".
PART I: The 80's
PART II: Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display Of Power
PART III: Far Beyond Driven
PART V: Official Live 101 Proof and Reinventing The Steel
PART VI: Damageplan
PART VII: Rebel Meets Rebel and Hellyeah (2007)
PART VIII: Hellyeah (2010-2016)
This process is teaching me about how I review. If I've heard an album a million times, the music is usually less the focus. The review tends to be more about my relationship with the music (with random factoids sprinkled in so they don't just take up space in my brain). I don't know if that's as useful to the reader, but these are all what comes to me when I sit down to write, not trying to tick boxes and discuss specific criteria. I still talk about the music, but it becomes harder to describe. Kinda like tying your shoes. It's something you do without thinking every day, but stop to think about it while you're doing it and you're fucked.
Point is, I'm just not thinking about the drums as much, even though Vinnie Paul was low key incredible his whole career. Which is kind of it, isn't it? He's the ultimate pocket guy. He serves the song and even if he's going ham, it's because it's necessary. I could have dissected the cool kickdrum pattern he rattles off on "Becoming", but I don't know much about technique (being self-taught and all), I could never play that in a thousand years because I'm not great with my feet and it doesn't make for the best reading when you break it down. Here and there, yes; if it added flavor to the piece, sure. But I'm gonna do the pocket thing as best I can. (Which ain't much, since I'm the king of parentheticals and pointless asides. I even edit these, but I have a hard time cutting my children, y'know? Fuck the sappy shit; let's scream into the void with:)
THE GREAT SOUTHERN TRENDKILL (1996) **** and 1/8
This is a weird record. Think about it. It's got death metal thrash, a cowbell driven groove single, swing rhythms, a frickin' "Wanted Dead Or Alive" sound-alike smack dab in the middle, weird keyboard interludes with subliminal vocal ASMR (man that sets off my douche-chills) a seven minute epic with a solo most call Dimebag's best and closes with two songs that tune down to G six years before Meshuggah did. All in 11 songs.
Let's unpack that a bit: The title track scorches the Earth from the get-go, unleashing Phil Anselmo and guest vocalist Seth Putnam's voice-destroying cries of rage. And I mean that literally: you can hear Phil's voice disintegrate over the course of the record. It also has Dimebag Darrel's most underrated solo for the last 90 seconds of runtime.
"War Nerve" has like eight different parts during less than five minutes of existence. Cliché screeds against the media aside, this song is pretty killer. The section where Vinnie goes hard on the toms about 2/3rds of the way in and Dime palm mutes in unison is the shit.
"Drag The Waters" has lame lyrics and it's not exciting or anything, but as a straight ahead hard rock song it works for me. I think because Dime adds so much character with his playing. "10's" has always been a bit underwhelming, but the title refers to the smallest measure of heroin you can buy so the fact that it feels "morose and old" was probably intentional. (Side note: It was featured in a 2003 Dragonball Z movie! What a weird choice!)
"13 Steps To Nowhere" is fucking rad musically. It's got one of my favorite Vinnie Paul drum patterns. The whole intro is just dope. The verses lean hard on the agro, some real fist pumping shit there. Then you realize the lyrics are...
When we were kids, we bumped this shit either because a) we thought this was illustrating a problematic situation that needed solving, b) it was trying to be over the top with its imagery because being an edgelord was an acceptable pastime back then or c) we didn't think about the lyrics because metal is rad and who cares what they're saying as long as it slams? Take your pick. But here's the second verse:
"A backwards swastika
The black skin riddled in lead
A Nazi Gangster Jew
It beats a dog that's dead
It's in to use the slang
Outbreak of gun roulette
The cross slants to the side
We'll prove the damnedest yet"
We used to laugh at the line "Nazi gangster Jew" because those three words strung together just sound so dumb and didn't think that could possibly be a thing. I'm still not sure what the fuck it is; it sounds ridiculous. But that verse put into context with the man who wrote it is enough to turn my stomach. It's an ugly side of humanity I don't want to think about. Does that invalidate it as art? No. Art is expression of the human condition and people have ugly feelings. We might think those people are wrong, but they still feel those feelings and they use art to express them. But it's my freedom of expression to tell a dude who says this kind of shit to fuck off, so...fuck off.
"Suicide Note Pt. 1" is an acoustic Bon Jovi sounding thing in the middle of this maelstrom. It's about someone who either gets caught before they can go through with a suicide attempt or failed one recently and don't have the energy to try again tonight, so they'll wait. They know their train's a comin' soon.
"Suicide Note Pt. 2" is an accurate description of the intense rush of someone screaming so hard because they're trying to make their own head explode. It's a harrowing illustration of anger so intense that you start to inflict violence on yourself. You get caught up in the fervor. You're using that intensity to block out your rational mind because you hate yourself so much you just want your limbic brain to give you permission to lose control and bypass your self-preservation mechanisms and do something you can't take back. So yeah, I can say from experience they get it right. The grindy part at the end when you're so drained from all the energy you throw into it that all you have left is an empty hum is a little off. It's less aggressive than that, more a stream of sobbing punctuated with "Don't look at me!" and "Leave me alone!" (even if you are alone) but that wouldn't have fit the song.
"Living Through Me" is a self-reflection after the scary episodes in the few songs prior. "Drop the needle / And stop what your changing into" it says. The chorus describes a laundry list of fucked up things that have become mundane in the life of an addict. And the line "Now you're living through me" is not spoken by Anselmo: it's spoken by heroin. Also that weird, slithery breakdown where everything grinds to a halt to get doped up for a minute. Never liked that part, but this time through I got the atmosphere of it for the first time in 21 years of listening to it, so...eh?
"Floods" is a lot to take in. It starts as an acoustic number , features singing (there's more of it than I remember on this record, actually) instead of screaming the top of his head off, and some tasty chords with ninths and shit. Then the breakdown is pretty grindy, but the piece du-resistance is Dimebag's solo. It wasn't until I was listening to it at a cookout this past weekend when I heard Rex Brown's bass part during that part. You wanna talk about tasty, holy shit man. Rex delivered. The solo itself is a masterclass in how to melt souls. Fuck melting faces; this shit will melt your soul. Then back to the breakdown and the outro arpeggio thing that puts the perfect button on this suite. People tend to shit on bands for clean singing and putting melodic parts in their otherwise brutal records, but "Cemetery Gate" and "Floods" are two of Pantera's most revered songs. And they're awesome because of melody.
"The Underground In America" has some woefully disastrous lyrics, but it's still kind of fun. Also, for 1996 this was relatively unexplored territory as far as low tuning. Drop G was nutsacks scraping the ground low back then; Korn only tuned down to A by that point, and even most de-tuned bands of the time didn't venture past B. Fun fact: G is about as low as you can tune a bass guitar and still have it be audible. Even then you can only kind of hear it, so for those out there crying for a twelve string guitar that goes down an octave below a bass guitar, I've got some bad news for you.
What were we talking about? Oh yeah. The only other thing that jumps out at me from "The Underground" is the line "Lesbian love is accepted and liked". Meant to be an edgy, in-your-face statement to middle America about how transgressive their scene is, it comes off as oddly progressive now until you remember the source and somethingsomething male gaze.
"Underground" has a prolonged ending with some weird noises and ringing out guitars and Phil screaming "The Trend. Is. DEAD." until the last track "(Repirse) Sandblasted Skin" starts. It's basically the same song, but with lyrics so cheap they're on sale at the "fucking dollar store". It's the band jamming out ideas they couldn't fit into the previous song. It's the more musically adventurous of the two, which saves it from being an unnecessary footnote to a record without a proper ending. Instead, it brings the proceedings to a properly pummeling conclusion.
"The Great Southern Trendkill" is a raw, unflinching and overlooked...oh shit, this song's fading back in? Damn. Are we...okay, I guess they're done. That was...so 90's, wasn't it? Fucking bonus tracks.
Anyway, I liked this album a helluva lot more than I maybe ever did listening back to it this time. I always thought this was the weak link because of all its detours, but it may be the bands most interesting because of them. Not best, but most interesting. They tried shit they would unfortunately never try again. They pushed things as far as they were probably going to go. And for that I salute them.
But pushing things too far would have consequences. Phil Anselmo would be clinically dead for four to five minutes on stage during the subsequent tour after a heroin overdose. He got hooked on pain pills because of two herniated discs in his back and felt like he couldn't take time off to fix them because Pantera needed to keep going. Phil wouldn't get back surgery until 2005 because doctors refused to operate on him unless he stopped using hard drugs beforehand.
Tensions between Anselmo and the band were at an all time high. He didn't even record the vocals of "Trendkill" with the band. They tracked it in Texas and Anselmo did his parts at Trent Reznor's studio in New Orleans. They got in the studio and did two songs for the 1997 live album to put on as a reason to buy it, but after that things kept being sour and distant.
Join us next time for the conclusion of the Pantera years: "Reinventing The Steel".
PART I: The 80's
PART II: Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display Of Power
PART III: Far Beyond Driven
PART V: Official Live 101 Proof and Reinventing The Steel
PART VI: Damageplan
PART VII: Rebel Meets Rebel and Hellyeah (2007)
PART VIII: Hellyeah (2010-2016)
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