52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #7

Prong - Cleansing

(Epic, 1993)

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I use the term “party metal”, and nobody ever seems to know what I mean.  I refer to music that has all the hallmarks of heavy metal, meaning it would never be able to infiltrate the mainstream, but has the energy, danceability, and sense of fun that might result in a party getting started, even if only by one lonely guy in his front room.  I’m most often referring to bands like Every Time I Die, their no-holds-barred lyrics, and their don’t-give-a-shit charm, but the term started before that band even came around.  For one shining album, Prong made party metal that could have sweaty maniacs moshing hell-for-leather one moment, and grooving all sexy-like, looking for a hook-up the next.  It feels like music for people who would wear leather trousers out even though it’s 35 degrees in the club, but simultaneously it’s for those who subscribe to the Andrew W.K. party uniform.  So even if you’re in your jeans and white T-shirt, grab your leathered friend, get Cleansing blasting through your speakers, and let the party commence.

Produced by 90s metal producer extraordinaire, Terry Date, you’ll hear Pantera guitar tone influences on this record, and at times that groove metal feel might make you think Prong are little more than Pantera impersonators.  However, Prong and Tommy Victor (guitar, vocals) are far less interested in macho posturing and way more into industrial and dance music influences.  In fact, Prong are closer to White Zombie in their sense of musical fun, and, while the explosion of DJs in metal bands wouldn’t occur until later, you can feel the push towards scratching being incorporated into metal with some of the guitar techniques and sampling employed here.  “Broken Peace” begins with a Tom Morello-inspired background riff and a pummelling bass line.  Those Rage Against the Machine-like guitar squeaks hint at the developments mainstream metal would see in the 90s, but more importantly provide a lighter, more danceable backdrop to the industrial riffing that kicks in.  While Prong want you to dance to their tunes and keep everyone happy with their rounded rhythm section sounds, they are a heavy band and the riffs are crushing in their weight and sharpness.  Tommy Victor’s vocals are not the usual frothing, angry metal frontman style, but rather have a slow, deliberate burning intensity to them, exemplified by his delivery of the lines:

Now it's all exploding

Pick up the broken peace

Nothing left to break.

“One Outnumbered” maintains this vaguely politicised burning intensity but balances it with coddling passages of dream-like guitar clouds and soothing bass.  It’s indicative of a band mindful of dynamics and the value of a gentle sway to break up the neck-snapping headbanging.  That’s all well and good, but it ain’t metal if it doesn’t punch you in the face at some point, and the riff here is a series of jaw-cracking jabs, the vocal a left hook to make your head spin.  It’s one of those riffs that makes you wish you could bang your head backwards as well, as if standard headbanging doesn’t fully express your approval of the pacing, rhythm and crunch of that guitar sound.  Tommy Victor displays an exceptional innate sense of rhythm and groove on this record, both on guitar and in his vocals, and at points the album feels like a tribute to the riff, every song designed to put its perfectly formed guitar parts directly into your brain.

Even when things get a little swampy on the later tracks, there is an undeniable guitar hook in each song.  The squeezed riff of “No Question” inspires thoughts of Zakk Wylde’s over-exposed production on Sonic Brew; “Home Rule” hits with the intensity of Rollins Band and its great riff is perfectly complemented by peppery drumming; the staccato phrasing of “Sublime” is a prime example of what Prong do even if it wanders too much.  But the true heart of this album is in its opening third.  First track, “Another Worldly Device”, does not delay its riff attack, shredding your tympanic membrane with a delightfully abrasive guitar sound played at speeds that keep your feet moving double time.  The raspy vocals match that riff, before the solo injects a little left-field lunacy with wailing squeaks that continue to lie below the surface of the closing chorus.  “Cut-Rate” has a lunacy of a thrashier nature, with top speed being reached within tenths of a second of the song’s beginning.  The solo somehow seems to crank that speed up until the song can barely contain itself and it dissolves into some vague industrial noises and a plodding, heavy outro.  While both of these songs are great, Prong’s strength is not necessarily in playing at speed.  The album’s iconic high point is the party metal duo of “Whose Fist Is This Anyway?” and “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck”, both more focused on intense groove, stop-and-start rhythms, and banging of the head.

“Whose First Is This Anyway?”, a song title applicable to so many life situations, is built on an incessant rhythm that allows the guitar parts to chop, stop, roll and generally keep the listener grooving and moving.  The influence of and on White Zombie can be heard most clearly here and is a clear sign of Terry Date’s work across the bands he worked with in the 90s.  “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” is a bona fide heavy metal classic.  The lyrics of working class hardship seem to carry a self-reflexive heavy metal importance that has made the track a club classic since its release.  The rolling bass intro lines up another cutting Prong guitar sound, but it’s happy to let Victor’s voice stand on its own before lurching back in with a galloping pre-chorus riff.  The picked sections, open string strumming, pinched harmonics, and vicious main riff provide an incredibly varied foundation for the iconic line to grab hold of its listeners, “snap your fingers, snap your neck”.  It’s a song for singing along, swinging your hair, and banging your head with your friends whether they prefer leather or denim.  Christ, even if they prefer corduroy or twill cotton.  Cleansing is an album that exists right at modern metal’s heart.  Welcoming fans from both ends of the metal spectrum to celebrate guitar riffs and party hard.  While Prong have never quite rediscovered this perfect balance, Cleansing stands as a classic metal album with an identity all its own.      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #28

Pantera – Vulgar Display of Power

(Atco, 1992)

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This blog post is getting stuck in my brain.  Pantera were a huge influence in my shift towards heavy metal, and years ago would have been a top ten band.  But my understanding of their music is shrouded now.  The on-stage murder of guitarist Dimebag Darrell amid an acrimonious band split, a retrospective reinterpretation of the band’s open embrace of white American South values, and the ongoing problem of vocalist Phil Anselmo’s racism have marred a joyful experience of chest-beating, mosh-pitting, trend-killing heavy metal.  In a 90s scene that was struggling to hold on to the aggressive, virtuosic, solo-filled thrash fury of the 80s, Pantera were the self-proclaimed saviours of “real” metal.  While metal would have survived without Pantera, it is not an exaggeration to credit them with maintaining the dreams of mainstream metal fans enduring the side effects of grunge in the early 90s, and the near disaster of nu metal in the latter part of the decade.  In 1992 Pantera intended Vulgar Display of Power to be the antidote to the seismic shift in heavy metal caused by Metallica’s “Black Album”.  It is concentrated metal attitude with the hardcore edge that Phil Anselmo brings to most of his projects.  The fun-time rock ‘n’ roll shenanigans of Dimebag Darrell and his drummer brother Vinnie Paul, evidenced by their earlier power metal phase, are keenly balanced by Phil’s desire for Pantera to lead rather than follow at a time when heavy metal was in disarray. 

While the macho, “us vs. them” lyrics may not have aged well, Phil Anselmo was undeniably the best frontman in metal through the 90s.  On “A New Level” and “Mouth For War” Anselmo’s bravado is a galvanising force for those on the inside and a stiff middle finger to those outside.  The swaggering groove of “Walk” and its staccato gang vocal chorus set the tone for an album that hammers at the same point repeatedly without ever boring the listener.  Anselmo’s unwavering delivery is central to this feat.  Combining vocal depth and abrasiveness previously unheard in mainstream metal, his performance became the blueprint for a generation of American heavy bands.  It is, even after all the shit that has happened, an irresistible display of anger and arrogance. 

But it only partially prepares you for the ferocity of Pantera’s self-proclaimed “hit” song, the almost-too-subtle “Fucking Hostile”.  At this point your ears turn to the perfect rhythm sounds and crisp solos of guitarist Dimebag Darrell.  He was killed in 2004 while playing with his new band Damage Plan, but the work he left behind could be the genius product of a lifetime of practice.  While the influences of Eddie Van Halen and Ace Frehling can always be heard in Dimebag’s work, it is channelled here to produce a genre-leading album that revels in going against the grain.  “Fucking Hostile” is built around a Battery-esque verse riff, a pure Pantera groove-laden chorus, and a phenomenal solo from a man who kept alive the traditions of guitarist forbears while pushing the art in new directions.  Dimebag used his whammy bar as a second vocalist.  If you ever saw Pantera live or have been in a metal club when Pantera songs hit the dancefloor, you’ll have witnessed people “singing” along with Dime’s solos, and “…Hostile” is a prime example, wailing out like a NWOBHM singer.  This quality is continued, at half the pace, on album lynchpin “This Love”.  Dime’s picked opening is atmospheric, channelling the spirit of the classic “Cemetery Gates” from previous album Cowboys From Hell, and is supported by Anselmo’s thoughtful croon.  The direct heaviness of the chorus riff and its interplay with the vocal hark back to “Walk”, but “This Love” has much more happening with an extended bridge section and bruisingly slow and heavy breakdown leading to an expressive Dimebag solo.  Pantera display everything that makes them so influential in this one song.

Drummer Vinnie Paul and bassist Rex Brown are central to that Pantera sound, providing an immense foundation that allows Dimebag to seamlessly veer from rhythm to lead guitar.  Driven by thick bass and tom sounds, measured use of double bass, heavy china and crash strikes, and an unerring snare that cuts through the guitar without ever overcrowding the song, Vinnie’s performance on Vulgar… is classic heavy metal drumming updated for the modern metal fan.  Rex’s bass is gut-shaking low-end with enough hook to stand alone.  In “No Good (Attack the Radical)” the bass riff during the opening verse builds tension brilliantly while Vinnie’s thunderous skin beating powers the song throughout.  “Regular People (Conceit)” displays the unity the band had as performers: the riffs and drums play off each other while the vocals feed on that energy, constantly propelling them forward.  The bass makes this possible with its unshakeable solidity and groove.  But its Dimebag’s riffs that stick in the mind, and “By Demons Be Driven” is a bursting-to-life of his flare, heaviness, groove, and free-flowing solo genius.  He does everything in this song from militarily heavy riffing and blues-inspired grooving, to the pained squeezing of notes and one-man “duelling” solos.  In combination with Anselmo’s perfect roars of “by demons be driven”, Dimebag’s performance creates another classic heavy metal track and sets up the sonically diverse closer.

Establishing itself as a ballad about the death of a friend, “Hollow” displays Pantera’s classic metal influences before splitting itself in half and hitting you with a neck-snapping series of riffs, double bass driven drums, and vicious vocals.  And this is what Vulgar… did to me when I was growing up: it introduced me to music from earlier generations by openly celebrating its influences, but was completely intent on carving out a new extreme, groove-based sound that was unwavering in its self-belief.  Pantera were, throughout the 90s, the one mainstream metal band that refused to pretend.  While other bands experimented, softened, or catered to the masses, Pantera held to their “fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke” attitude, and proved that heavy music would always have an audience irrespective of trends.  For me, and many others, that all started with this album and the screeching slide at the start of “New Level”.  That moment proved these guys weren’t here to please anyone else, and that they would dominate through sheer force of will.  And while their story has taken painful and unacceptable turns, during the Phil Anselmo era Pantera produced a decade of musical aggression that stands alongside the work of the biggest metal bands in history.      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #36

Down - NOLA

(Elektra Records, 1995)

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I turned over the CD case of Down’s debut album in the old Virgin Megastore in Glasgow, and was met with an image that would burn itself in to my brain.  A thorn-crowned Jesus figure with a joint hanging casually from his lips with dark shadows for eyes, nearly drowned in monochrome roughness.  A relatively mainstream metal fan in those days, I found the extreme metal scene to be foreign, out of reach, and filled with noises my ears couldn’t understand.  I was intrigued by what I heard, but I didn’t know why, and ended up backing away from it for years.  While Down aren’t extreme metal, this picture on the back cover of their first album, NOLA, generated the same subconscious response.  This was not my usual fare.  It had an underground feel to it despite the familiar and influential names involved.  While Down was comprised of Pepper Keenan of Corrosion of Conformity, Kirk Windstein and Todd Strange of Crowbar, Jimmy Bower of Eyehategod, and Phil Anselmo of Pantera, something about the independent, DIY image that the artwork, logo, and track listing conveyed had me questioning if it was going to be something I could handle.  Problem was, I was hooked on the band already, I just didn’t know it.  I anxiously walked by the CD several times until my curiosity completely consumed me, and I ended up laying out £15 for it in 2000.  That’s £400 new money.  I had entered a new world.

As “Temptation’s Wings” filled my room with 60s and 70s-inspired, metal-edged hard rock and Phil Anselmo’s growl, I was simultaneously relieved, disappointed, and incredibly excited.  Relieved that this wasn’t some bizarre, experimental side project that I might have to pretend to like; disappointed that it wasn’t exactly that and a bit more; and excited that I had just found a band that represent everything I’ve ever wanted from music.  The riffs are big but aren’t trying to be heavier than they need to be.  The drums are concerned with feel and gentle details as much as getting your head banging.  The leads and harmonised guitar parts are about emotion and storytelling rather than showing off any technical prowess.  The vocals are aggressive but with a crooning quality to them that provides this stoner rock with punch and melody.  This is all wrapped in the swampy production that has become associated with the Nola scene in general, and more specifically with the self-generated lore of band production base, Nodferatu’s Lair, to create a sound that nods to influences but is stirringly unique. 

By the time the final riff of “Temptation’s Wings” blended into the sharper opening of “Lifer”, I was committed.  I remember nearly breaking my neck on first hearing this song.  Bower’s insistent percussion mandates ferocious headbanging, and to this day I consider “Lifer” a pit-starter with soul.  It’s familiar lyrical and thematic territory for Pantera fans, but with this Southern Rock setting the edges soften, the puffed-out chests deflate, and honest emotion starts to seep through.  It’s heavy metal that wants you to snap your neck, but look after your soul and the souls of those around you.

My memories of hearing these first two Down songs are so strong that I often struggle to look beyond them for my favourite tracks, but “Stone The Crow” steps right up and demands its place alongside these tracks.  If anything, it ups the Southern Rock vibe, gently caressing you with its lilting down home guitar, while simultaneously hitting you hard with lyrics that only hint at the strain in Anselmo’s heart regarding his Southern upbringing, identity, and his place in a culture that is inherently racist.  While Anselmo’s racist outbursts have tainted Down’s career, the band’s identity is not entirely caught up in false or blinded notions of the Good Ol’ South.  For some, it’s more about Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, guitar riffs, and a lot of weed.  While crushing odes like “Eyes of the South”, with its incredible jammed-out intro, gigantic bass sound, and unstoppable twin guitars, revel in imagery of the South and love of it what it offers to some of its inhabitants, Down’s true identity is found in “Hail to the Leaf” and Nola’s defining track, “Bury Me In Smoke”.  In the former, the sound of a bong bubbling away undercuts the heavy riff and more aggressive and direct drumming to intertwine with Anselmo’s tortured lyrics and create an atmosphere of clouded judgement and self-hatred.  In the latter, we find Down’s declaration of greatness.  “Bury Me In Smoke” is a huge and confident song fuelled by weed and driven by brilliant guitar riffs.  It brings together all the elements Down displayed in the preceding songs, but knows where this album’s, and this band’s, heart truly lies: In allowing the main riff to fade away then briefly reprising it before the album finishes, Down remind us that at its core, this is music for people who love heavy and honest guitars.  All the drugs, self-hatred, and ideas about the South can step to one side: Hail to the riff.