semi-gayidity

fandoms:

wwe

guns n roses

pantera

others that may pop up frequently:

always sunny

911

boy meets world

martin and lewis

spn

teen wolf

life with derek

the rookie

glow

ships:

dime x phil

slaxl

charlexa

rhiyo

priestntyre

finndamian

livdom

jhea

jeymian

macdennis

bucktommy (ex-buddie)

jeric

stuilly

sterek

dasey

samdean

and there's a ton more! lol

also i don't mind rpf-posting! you'll see me post about j2, glob/globlin, slaxl, dime and phil, dean and jerry, etc~ overall it's just like gossiping okAy :)

other interests:

evil dead franchise

scream franchise (obvs)

fnaf franchise

horror movies in general :)

taylor swift

bailey sarian

classic cars

ocean liners

dmc (devil may cry) video game franchise

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i edit things! videos, gifs, etc! this is my passion in fandom <3

and i sporadically write fic! usually when there's not enough in the fandom, like i'm currently working on some dime x phil stuff :)

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if there's ANYTHING you'd like to chat about, don't be afraid to send an ask/message my way! even just random thoughts!

BERNARD DOE REPORTS ON THE NON-STOP POWER METAL FORCE FROM TEXAS- PANTERA

PANTERA are not a new name to the pages of METAL FORCES. Regular readers will remember when we featured the band in Issue No. 4, over four years ago, soon after the Texas based quartet had released their self-financed debut album “Metal Magic”. Then, two albums later (“Projects In The Jungle” and the maximum star rating “I Am The Night”), the band appeared on the cover of MF16 which I remember brought many reactions of “who the hell are PANTERA!?” Well, back then we all expected the band to get their long awaited major deal but sadly it was not to be. The band seemed to vanish from the metal scene altogether following the departure of vocalist Terrence Lee, but they eventually found a replacement whom they were happy with in Phil Anselmo, and recorded their fourth album, the excellent “Power Metal”, (reviewed in MF27) which, like their previous releases, was put out on the band’s own label Metal Magic Records.

So what exactly have PANTERA been up to the past two and a half years, and what hopes have they got for the future? Well let’s find out by bringing in the band- that’s Phil, Rex Rocker (bass) and the Abbott brothers, Diamond Darrell (guitar) and Vinnie Paul (drums).

Vinnie: “The main reason you haven’t heard from PANTERA in a while is because we ran into some musical and personal differences with Terry. After we had done the “I Am The Night” album he wanted to move the musical direction of the band into a more commercial Top 40 sound, whereas we wanted to be a touch heavier than we were but still maintain that melodic sound, so eventually we parted company. Then it took us about a year and a half before we found a new singer we were really happy with. We had a couple of fill-in singers who couldn’t really cut it, but eventually we got in touch with Phil and we immediately hit it off real good. Then we started doing the new album and at last it’s finally here.”

The two “fill-in” singers you mentioned were Matt L’Amour and David Peacock correct?

Darrell: “We had two, three or four singers, I can’t remember exactly, but it doesn't matter who they were, they’re out and now we have Phil. To be honest the other singers are not worth catching the credit for.”

OK, so how did you get in contact with Phil?

Vinnie: “Well we were kind of hating it, not being able to find the right singer, and we’d heard from some people we know in Louisiana that Phil was the right guy for us, and he’d also heard that we were looking for the type of singer he is, and anyway I can’t remember if we called him or he called us, but he came down for an audition and we loved it, so he went home, packed his bags and moved to Texas.”

Now we all heard about PANTERA signing a record deal with Gold Mountain Records and everybody expected the new album to come out on said label. But it didn't- why?

Darrell: “Well they signed us but they had to get a major label to distribute us, someone like Atlantic, and they wanted to change our style and make us sound like BON JOVI, which is not quite up our alley.”

Vinnie: “So Gold Mountain gave us permission to release the album on our own label. We're still signed to them until August but we don't think anything is gonna happen with them. However at the moment we’re getting a lot of interest from a guy named Bret Hartman at Columbia Records and they’re talking about taking “Power Metal” and re-distributing it, kinda like METALLICA did with Elektra for “Ride The Lightning”.”

“Power Metal” is certainly a lot heavier than your past product. And in my review of the album I pin-pointed a lot of METALLICA and MEGADETH comparisons. Do you agree with those comments?

Darrell: “I wouldn't disagree with it, but at the same time I wouldn’t say there’s any direct rip-off or anything like that. I’d say we only sound like PANTERA.”

Rex: “Darrell's always been chunking those riffs out right from the start, I mean it's not like all of a sudden we’ve turned around and started riffing out like this. But now with Phil in the band we’ve got a chance to make those riffs fully happen instead of having some singer over the top of them.”

Phil: “Yeah, apparently I don't have a real beautiful voice, I’m a heavy metal singer.”

Darrell: “PANTERA is heavy fuckin' metal, and that's what bands like METALLICA and MEGADETH is so I can see how you can relate it.”

Rex: “We'd rather be in that genre than anything else, put it that way.”

Now, you’ve released four albums, but you’ve still not had any product released in Europe. When is that situation likely to change?

Vinnie: “Well we're certainly hoping that's gonna change real soon. The reason we couldn't do anything over there with “Power Metal” was because we're still signed to Gold Mountain. And to keep everything legal the only way we could put this album out ourselves was to release it on Metal Magic Records, our own label, and have it distributed by a company in the United States. But once August comes, if we haven't signed to a major, then I'm sure we'll get the album released over in Europe through one of the independent labels there.”

Marc Ferrari (ex-KEEL guitarist) has helped PANTERA quite a lot, how did he get involved?

Darrell: “Well we were at a KEEL/LOUDNESS show and we saw Marc skateboarding around in the crowd during the interval. We went up to him and got talking and I gave him a tape of our “Projects In The Jungle” album and asked him to check it out. We didn't think we would ever hear from him again, but he wrote us a letter saying how great he thought the album was and couldn't understand why we weren't on a major label, and he immediately went to work trying to help us get a deal.”

Vinnie: “And that's kinda how we got signed to Gold Mountain which is the same label as KEEL are on. Since that day Marc’s been a super friend to us. He had wrote a song, “Proud To Be Loud”, which KEEL didn't like, and he offered it to us and we liked it a real lot so we flew Marc in and we recorded it for the “Power Metal” album. Marc was also the guy that turned Bret from Columbia onto our tapes, so he’s been a great help to the band and we wish him a lot of luck with the new band he’s putting together right now.”

Why did you decide to re-record “Down Below” on the new album, a song that was originally on your last album “I Am The Night”?

Vinnie: “We had some newer material cut, but we knew that “Power Metal” would sell a lot more records than our past albums because we now had exclusive distribution through Important, so we decided to take “Down Below”, record it a little quicker and have Phil singing on it so that our fans could hear how he was gonna sound on the older material, and really we didn't want a good song to go to waste because we only sold about 25,000 copies of “I Am The Night” through bad distribution. We've already sold 25,000 copies of “Power Metal” and that's after only three weeks of release.”

Does that mean that on future albums you may go back and re-record some of your older material?

Darrell: “If we get a major deal then I think we'll definitely take some old songs that we feel are too good to remain on a limited, independent record, because I think we've done some awesome songs in the past.”

Rex: “Gold Mountain wanted us to re-record “Hot’N Heavy”, “Come On Eyes” and stuff like that, and “Down Below” was one of them, so we said fuck it we’ll put it on “Power Metal” and it’ll sound 100 times better.”

Darrell: “I don't think you'll get us caught up in the cover song scene, we’ve always been into releasing full-length, original material heavy metal albums, and I'm sure that's the way it will remain.”

Darrell, explain what the song “P*S*T*88” is all about!?

Darrell: “Ha! Ha! Well actually it’s called “Pussy Tight”! But we decided to doll it up a little and call it “P*S*T*88”. I don't know how hot porn flicks are over there, but we’re all into “Vanessa” flicks and anything that's “XXX” and we figured that there hadn't been any band since the MENTORS who have jammed up anything like this so we thought it’d be a real good subject to cover!”

Phil: "We also wanted to show off the talent of Darrell’s vocals. Ha! Ha! Darrell does have that Geoff Tate/Bruce Dickinson range!!”

Darrell: “Ha! Ha! Yeah, and I sound like Ian Gillan on the chorus- check it out!”

What’s the gig situation like for PANTERA at the moment?

Vinnie: “Well we’ve been playing for about a year and three months with Phil, all basically in the same area. But we’re working real hard right now in getting a tour lined up. And we’re hoping to come over to England first. We’ve been in touch with some promoters and we’re just waiting for them to get back to us.”

Darrell: “Don’t get us mixed up with bands who cut an album and put it out as their sole claim to fame, because we do play every week and we’re always working at our live performance.”

Phil: “You talk to any real PANTERA fan who comes to all the shows and they’ll tell you straight out that nobody really knows what PANTERA are like until they’ve seen the band live. We do support a lot of the major bands that come through here but mainly we headline and we have a huge following. We played a show at the Arcadia out here which holds eight hundred people and we had FIFTEEN HUNDRED people in the place and they were all going apeshit.”

Darrell: “And what’s more, that was the show we held especially for Gold Mountain and Atlantic. They were both there but they didn’t take any notice.”

Phil: “They wanted BON JOVI. They didn’t notice every goddamn person in the place breaking their fuckin’ neck head-banging. Everybody was wearing a PANTERA shirt and I mean EVERYBODY! We sold out of merchandise that night and man, I’m telling you, somebody’s gotta see what the fuck’s going on. If anyone wants to make any money at all then they’ve gotta get down here and see what PANTERA is all about. We are one of the true heavy metal bands that’s gonna be here for years and years, and we’ll never wimp out. Once most bands get a major deal they wimp out, but not PANTERA, we’ve already proved that, and that’s our A1 priority- to stay loyal to our fans.”

PANTERA are still very much based in Texas, but haven’t you ever been tempted to re-locate to the more accessible metal cities such as New York or L.A.?

Vinnie: “No not at all. We go out to L.A. once a year just to check out the scene and it’s like disgusting- it’s full of glam shit. We’re not like that, we’re Texans and we’ve gotta stay true to our roots. In L.A., if GUNS N’ROSES are hot then everybody tries to look and sound like them. If MOTLEY CRUE’s hot, then that’s the next thing, and it’s just super trendy out there and we just don’t want to get caught up in that.”

So is there a strong metal scene in Texas just waiting to break out?

Darrell: "I think there’s a huge metal scene just waiting to break out all around. I think metal is just growing, I really do, there’s just so many bands. What METALLICA have done for metal is just phenomenal.”

Phil: "In Texas though I think that Joe Thrasher’s around the world will be pretty fuckin’ surprised at what’s happening out here.”

Vinnie: “The people here are not all hillbillies like everyone thinks.”

Darrell:“There’s a lot happening here, the only problem is that it gets a little bit frustrating now and again, but we’ll never quit.”

What are the plans for the next PANTERA album? Are you writing new material or are you sitting tight hoping that “Power Metal” will get picked up by a major?

Vinnie: “I think if the major label thing doesn’t happen before July, then we’ll be back in the studio recording a new album.”

Darrell: "We’re writing new material all the time, and we think the next record is gonna be packed with gun powder and is gonna blow up when you open it up!”

And you’d better believe it. We’ve been raving about PANTERA here at METAL FORCES for over four years now so you know very well that we’re behind the band all the way. But there’s no doubt that PANTERA do have HUGE potential and it really is about time that a few more record companies took a closer look at what this Texas quartet have to offer, instead of wasting time and money on talentless, here-today-gone-tomorrow, “Image” bands. After all you only get sustained success with acts who produce quality records, and PANTERA certainly deliver the goods in that respect. So do yourselves a favour and check them out quick.