Jazz itself is hidebound by rules. It's controlled freedom, musically. I dabbled in that world, but the suffocating nerdism was even worse than metal. It was really disappointing musically, to find out what jazz really represents is conformism.

Strongly agree. It’s not that different from the previous two albums with regards to the bass mixing. Metallica’s sonic identity was in large part, realizing that the low frequencies of the guitars could replace the bass guitar.

You can tell they were already thinking this way with the bass playing on RtL. The bass mostly closely doubles the guitar, and then there are bass fills added throughout to give Cliff some room to shine. Especially on MoP, during the riffing, the bass is just not particularly distinguishable from the guitar’s low end.

Moreover, I just love the sound on Justice. It’s so fresh

Yup. Or the complete lack of rules (in the case of the most "free" free jazz), but the total lack of rules is its own limitation.

Learn a few modes, learn the concept of independent melodic voices, and bam, you now understand even the most "out there" post-bop/free jazz.

The most inaccessible thing about jazz to modern listeners, I think, is that 90% of the time it's non-programmatic (i.e. it has a conceit of "pure" music, it's not meant to convey an atmosphere or any non-musical ideas). Metal is more accessible in that our media landscape trains us that music conveys certain scenes, visuals, atmospheres, etc. like the score in a movie, and metal usually sticks as closely to this pretense as regular rock music or pop does. Which is why metal cover art is usually conceptually meant to represent the music.

This isn't the case in jazz. But once you get the idea jazz isn't programmatic, it's really not as heady or deep as people want you to think.

I mean all I was responding to was the idea that it's bad because it's not a traditional song. But I can agree it's really not hard to get into now that I've started listening, sure.

Wow lol joined in 2004 and has that username with only 5 posts…

SLIPKNOT has always sucked.

That is a common take here. I like some of their songs but not a band I'm that into. Vol 3 was a pretty solid album though.

I think it was a piqued response to the Maiden trolling

I like Slipknot until Gray death…

Like is a bigger word let's say that they are listenable and have nothing to do with the peaks(few sadly )of new metal…

Memory Garden - "1349"
Beautiful, 'majestic' doom metal for fans of Sorcerer, Candlemass, and While Heaven Wept.

I've never been a Slipknot fan. Sure, they're probably the heaviest band of all those that have been tagged with the nu-metal brush but I never found anything particularly intriguing about their music.

Recently listening to the discographies of Bathory and Morbid Angel I have come to the conclusion that I prefer "bad" albums that really have a charisma of their own over boring albums whose only quality is not to offend the listener. That's why I find myself preferring "Octagon" over "Destroyer of Worlds" or "Illud..." over "Heretic". It's like Troma movies, you enjoy them because how bad they are is part of their charm.

Can second Illud > Heretic, easily. Heretic had absolutely fire production but they wasted it on boring shit music. Illud was at least funny bad.

I think the only Cleansed in Pestilence (Blade of Elohim)is better than Illud….

CIP is good, but I prefer "Beneath the Hollow", Heretic sounds very good indeed.



Heretic was kind of half-experimental and focused on more music theory, I guess that who made the album boring was the two guitars (lead, rhythm) almost always hitting different rhythms and notes, while in the left side plays a riff, the right plays a different one; it's the only aspect I hate about Heretic

Unpopular here but Pantera, well the current iteration, sounds massive live. They were tight and Charlie was just killing those drums.

I have never liked this song but when they played Walk at the show last Friday and the entire stadium was screaming "respect, walk...." it was a massive rush.

Can't be too hard to play "Walk" properly...

I love Heretic. Some great songs on there (Praise the Strength is my favourite), although all those instrumental tracks towards the end mean it really runs out of steam (Drum Check always makes me smile though).

Surprised to see positive comments about the production (which I like as well), as I often see that mentioned a criticism.

Nope and that super simple riff is why I never liked that cut very much, but it wasn't about just that song. During that one in particular though the stadium was just electric. The crowd was very into them and it was pure adrenaline. It definitely didn't feel like a few guys looking to make some cash and not really caring about it.

For all the negative things I have to say about Phil Anselmo and this new version of Pantera, I think it's still fair to say that the musicians involved in this actually do enjoy being on stage, and playing Pantera songs. I'm not surprised that the fans who went to the show enjoyed themselves. For some this experience is a close as they will ever get to seeing "the real" Pantera, and for old time fans, it's good nostalgia. So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the show in itself, not considering the fact that Phil basically revived a band after the last founding member who told him not to do it passed away, and the fact that Anselmo is a racist turd, and that this is a Pantera line-up without Dimebag, and etc., I'm not surprised that the actual performances on stage would be good.

I still wouldn't go see them live, but I'm not surprised that the show was fun.

It's a shame a lot of the guys in the forum don't like Pantera, is a position that I don't understand and probably never will. For me, they were the ones who carried the flag of metal for a long time during the 90s, at least from a mainstream point of view, and they introduced a lot of new fans to extreme metal since Phil was a big fan of bands like Deicide or Darkthrone in a time where the internet didn't exist, and all the music was a lot harder to find.

No band did that after Pantera disbanded, except some metalcore and nü metal bands in the 2000s and 2010s metal was never as relevant and prevalent in Western society.

Yeah, and while driving to the Stadium Friday night we were cranking Trendkill, which for a major label album is heavy as hell and aggressive. In terms of platinum major label albums what is heavier and more abrasive? Iowa maybe? But just because it has blasting.

Though it seems half or more of the complaints I hear from people slamming them on metal forums are directed at the fans. "Meatheads", "jocks", "gym rats", etc. Yeah Pantera has the aggro elements that appeal to jocks and meatheads, but I have my meathead side and Pantera scratches an itch at times.

Or they are slammed for being influential on the nu-metal scene, which I don't think they should be blamed for. If you don't want to like them based on Phil's past statements or the Confederate Battle Flag that is up to you. Granted if one doesn't like the music or lyrics that is perfectly valid.

I don't hate Pantera, but I think that every album has only a handful of good songs on them and the rest ranges from boring to utter trash. There's a very good 10 to 12 songs album scattered somewhere throughout the Cowboys From Hell - Reinventing the Steel run.

Heretic at least is death metal,maybe experimental maybe sound weird but I like it,Illud is a joke…
taste are taste and I have no problem with that….

Heretic need a careful and many spin but it’s divisive I have admit..

Like I tried to say several pages back, there's definitely a small subset on this forum that seems to attack Pantera somewhat based on a perception of what the band's most hardcore fans are like. It all seems very psychological to me. Stunted development from high school, old memories dredged up. Like that last review for VDoP where the guy was just point blank saying the band had an attitude of "degeneracy" like some hand-wringing old church mom. I get it, they have that kind of redneck tough guy attitude, but half the reviews bitching about it can't even articulate a reason why they hate it so much.

I could go either way on Vulgar Display, sometimes I like it, other times not. But Cowboys and Trendkill are first rate albums. Tight, aggressive, hard as fuck songs.

That said I wouldn't go see the current touring band unless it was really cheap. I'm not that big a fan... I don't think I'd even pay a lot to see Maiden if it was only one or two original members left either, if it was just Bruce and Nicko or something. But I'm sure huge Pantera fans who never got to see them way back when would find something to like about that new band.

That happened to me once Hanneman died. No offense to Kerry King and Araya but without Hanneman it was never the same again. I like Gary Holt too much as a guitarist but Hanneman is someone you can't replace, no matter who you put in his place.

Yeah, and while I know it's probably cool for the younger fans and all that like I said, I just can't really get that excited if it's almost a tribute band or something. Just how it is for me. Queensryche a few years ago already kind of felt like that for me and that still had at least half original guys.

Jazz is cool. Try metal jazz like White Ward, Imperial Triumphant, Dillinger escape plan, SARMAT, etc..

I only caught them because they were opening up for Metallica, but after that if they come again on their own I'd go.

I'd agree with you on Cowboys and Trendkill being above the rest, though Vulgar has my favorite Pantera song on it.

That's also where I stand regarding Pantera. I don't hate them, but I never listen to any of their albums in full.

Power Metal is my favorite Pantera album.

I was not bullied by Pantera fans in high school or at any time in my life, and I still think that a big chunk of their fanbase is made of rednecks, douchebags, gym rats, "alpha males", racists and bigots of all sorts. If it was just their fans, but no... the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Phil Anselmo gives the same vibe of general douchebaggery, and yes, it definitely taints the whole image and perception I have of Pantera.

I'm not saying what you described doesn't exist, but there are also very valid reasons to dislike Pantera on the general vibe they give off. Plus, they really don't have all that many good music to begin with. Out of the most popular and commercially successful metal bands out there, Pantera is, in my opinion, one of the least consistent. Like I can easily listen to full albums by Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Gojira, Mastodon, etc., but I never feel like listening to Vulgar Display Of Power in full.

Yeah but there's this outsized focus on the fans being the reason the music is bad. Long paragraph rants in reviews about how Pantera's jock/redneck attitude is some kind of intrinsically bad thing - and I'm not saying it's necessarily good either, but just that these arguments keep harping on the "gym bro douchebag jock fans" in a way that I just can't see as really substantial. Like what does that stuff tell me about the art? Is it promoting some sort of ideology that's bad, or is it really just vibes you don't like? What am I supposed to take away from that analysis? It just always feels like the band's aesthetic is a sort of knee-jerk trigger for people who remember being bullied in school. I didn't mean anyone was literally bullied by Pantera fans but that many of the visceral negative reviews and stuff here just feel like the writers still have a bad taste in their mouth from high school and Pantera's vibes bring it back. Which would be an interesting approach to a review if it was self-aware and not trying to posit some universal negative quality in some lyrics about punching people.

As is, bringing in bigots and alpha males and all this stuff to 30-year-old albums by a defunct band just seems like a non sequitur, bringing up current culture war grievances where it doesn't seem to have total relevance...

And yeah I don't know, Anselmo is probably a racist asshole, but I don't really have time to worry about that... like what am I gonna do about that? It's why I started to see it as a bit pointless to keep harping on every last musician who's just an asshole or whatever. There's too many of them and eventually you realize there's more important things than that in life.

I agree.



Hey, you're free to make your own choices, for sure. But I personnally tend to like a band less when the people involved are dicks. It's not even a rationnal thing either. Like I tolerate some shitty people more then others, for arbitrary reasons. It's not like I have some kind of ironclad analysis I submit all my bands to to figure out if the musicians involved are shitty or not. But when I know they are, especially if the music itself doesn't connect with me that much to begin with, I don't really see a good reason to go out of my way to listen to it.

Again, I don't hate Pantera. They have good songs, even some extremely solid cuts like Cemetery Gates, where Anselmo's vocal chops really shined too. But their music is very inconsistent + I don't like Phil Anselmo as a person, so I tend not to gravitate towards that band much. But I don't hate Pantera.

Why is gym rat used as an insult? Makes me think a person saying that is intimidated by a buff dude or something.


Back to unpopular opinions!

Harsh vocals used for non harsh subjects, aka "serious" issue lyrics, is kind of silly.

Yes even on later Death albums. I think some of those albums would have worked better with the Control Denied vocalist. Why would cookie monster care about the environment? Just something that I'm thinking. Sci-Fi, horror, or gore work well with that vocal style for me but I don't care for it on styles I'm going to really focus on the lyrical content.

Then again with the quality of most heavy metal social/political commentary maybe its better if I can't really get what he's saying.

Do you go to the gym? Gym rat doesn't mean your average gym goer. Gym rats are douchebags who fancy themselves the apex of masculinity and who spout shit about how in life you're either a wolf or a sheep, or some other dumbassery taken from their bottom of the barrel philosophy. If you're "a buff dude" and not an asshole, you're not a gym rat.



Meh, I disagree with this. I like that death and black metal lyrics have basically no limits, and I couldn't care less if harsh vocals, growls, shrieks and whatnot are used to sing about the environment (like Gojira does). On the contrary, it gives a sense of urgency and passion, and makes them sound like they actually care about these issues.

In poor words Pantera =Goatmoon

Bah,was fan of them with a lot of friends in nineties and we were all “good”boys..

I think that in MA there is always a tendency to generalize about who listens to what..

And I bet that Metallica have more redneck and similar fan than Pantera

I always was skeptical of the phrase "separate the art from the artist" since it always seemed so much of the time to be used as a way to excuse or diminish the bad actions, rather than just saying up front "I like the music anyway." But there's just too many horrible things that people do, and some of them have also made really important and interesting music and movies and whatnot. And with the current political climate, new shit comes out all the time, too, and recontextualizes what we thought of people, which just makes everything even thornier. I think there's somewhat of a danger if you start looking at everything too much through a binary good/bad political lens. Plus it's just become clear that with all the shit happening in the world, consuming art is like the weakest possible way to be political at the end of the day.

We are literally one step away from a world war and still these speeches, certainly interesting about music?

Music is personal and private It's my conscience I have to answer if I like listening some bands…

unless I do propaganda for certain questionable bands…

But maybe I have different cultural humus(Anglo Saxon have different views I believe)

And the most important thing is mutual respect and tolerance even if I listen Satanic Warmaster….

Gotcha. I used to but never really ran into that. Most people were just lifting to lift or were posing to try and score I think. I just work out at home now.

I get the no limits but just doesn't work for me. Gojira was a band I was thinking of as well.

Saaaame... it's such a great album with amazing riffs.

I'll take ''Power Metal'' and ''I Am the Night'' over any other PanterA album anyday of the week... such a shame they aint available anywhere (outside YouTube).