Reinventing The Steel

Pantera’s final studio album was their strongest batch of songs since Cowboys From Hell. Fast, thrashy and rhythmically punishing tracks like “Hellbound,” “Goddamn Electric,” “Yesterday Don’t Mean Shit” and “Revolution Is My Name” were pure metal for metal’s sake, virtually impossible not to headbang or throw the horns to. Dimebag Darrell’s chugging guitar riffs and shrieking, torn-sheet-metal solos (which occasionally dipped all the way back to metal’s roots in electric blues, as on “It Makes Them Disappear”) were even heavier than on the noisy, ranting Far Beyond Driven, and his brother Vinnie Paul’s drums had a solid boom that bolted the music to the factory floor.