Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power (1992)
I made myself sit through this entire albium. In a word, yick. I had some misgivings when it came out 30 years ago, and I had loved their previous release Cowboys From Hell. At the time, all of my metalhead friendss loved it so I assumed I was missing something. I bought it on CD and listened to it a bunch, but it never clicked with me.
The problems with this album are numerous, and center stage is everything to do with Philip Anselmo. His vocals are absolutelty awful. His lyrics are as meatheaded as they are infantile. All his macho posturing is cartoonish and cringe inducing. He's too loud in the mix. In fact, the entire mix of this album is absolutely wretched. Rex the bassist can barely be heard. Vinnie Paul's drums sound kind of flat and compressed. Dimebag (at that point still Diamond) Darrell churns out amazing riffs (as he always does) but his guitar tone is just ...off on this release. The songwriting is weak. There are a few decent moments scattered throughout the album but it is by and large a complete miss. This is to say nothing of all the horrible things that would come out of Philip Anselmo's mouth later on (talking shit about former bandmates, advocating white supremacy, etc.)
Pantera are credited for kicking off the 90s nu-metal and "mallcore" sound, which is either a good thing or utter damnation depending on one's perspective. Certainly this album was more or less the end of me caring about the band at all. I'd occasionally hear a Pantera song as the 90s wore on and my opinion was always the same "Man, those riffs are sick but everything else about this is just abysmal." Now here were are in 2022, Dimebag has been gone for 18 years. Vinnie Paul passed 4 years ago. Rex did a hard rock solo album a while back and apparently it's pretty decent.
Phil hasn't been hit by a freight train yet and I view that as a great injustice.