Sunday, March 23, 2014

PANTERA's "Far Beyond Driven" 20 years and a few days later...

Not sure it's me only that somehow got out of the loop but I kinda expected to get to read tons of
celebratory blog entries, fb posts, tweets about that groundbreaking chart-crasher that has been Pantera (mark #2)'s fourth full-length record entitled "Far Beyond Driven". I didn't see any but, again, it can be me.
Twenty years a few days ago (March the 15th 1994) the metalmongers from Arlington, TX released their heaviest, groovier and brutal effort to that day -they possibly took the dirt and grime and blackness a full notch up with the 1996's follow-up "The Great Southern Trendkill".
I well remember Vinnie Paul (drums) during the interviews plugging this record with just one word "ABRASIVE". The guy kept going on and on...and it wasn't because he was suffering of lack of better terms to best describe their new soon-to-be-a-landmark album but in hindsight he could not pick a word as truly fitting as this, yeah "abrasive"!!!

You can read lotta better shit than mine on the net where this album and Pantera are granted by continuous widespread coverage but I was just thinking, again in retrospective, how influential this metal record has been in shaping the modern metal and the heaviest hybrids of hardcore influenced metal conditioned hardcore of today, and the last 10/15 years. Do you agree? Has "Far Beyond Driven" been this lot of an influence to modern metal-core? Or was Pantera that somehow got to implant Phil Anselmo's hardcore punk roots in their thrashmetal all-out assault with that fuck you attitude they've been known for?

Watch here the official video clip for the track "I'm Broken" - a hella heavy-concrete-texture-killer riff by Dimebag that matches the abrasiveness level mentioned by his brother Vinnie. One, two, three, four...

No comments:

Post a Comment