New Found Power

So after the death of the commercial metal titans Pantera with their final release 'Reinventing the Steel' all the members split ways to join (or focus on) various different projects. Phil Anslemo and Rex Brown would go on to use Pantera's left over momentum and build a brand new hit and miss brand of 'southern metal' actually pumping out some decent material with Down and Superjoint Ritual. After taking in this success one might say the Abbott brothers got the short end of the stick because they wound up making... this.

I mean first of all when I find a vocalist as bad as Fred Durst you know things have hit the fan. This guy, Patrick Lachman is crap. His harsh vocals sound like the harsh vocals from Slipknot but with less enthusiasm and energy but even more tough guy posturing (and we even have Corey Taylor on the record to compare him to). This is even before factoring in his clean vocals which have a grating quality to his voice which makes for an uneasy listen. I was actually excited by the idea that at least this guy wouldn't start rapping. He didn't, that might be a plus, problem is I have no idea if he's good at it or not without hearing it so that might have been the only thing they could have going for them.

Now for a large part of the album the songs focus on being about new beginnings and starting fresh, which is a nice sentiment, but I only bring it up because , they uhm, well if that's what they're going to preach then they should actually practice it. Despite all this wonderful talk of new beginnings the Abbots are still holding a grudge against Anselmo as it also includes a 'diss track' which strangely seems to contain more reason to hate Damageplan than to hate its intended victim. I mean if you're going to take Hatebreed's whole shtick of making hard music that encourages you to improve yourself, you should at least be consistent. The theme was the best thing here and it they left it feeling hollow.

Then of course we have Dimebag's guitar work. I mean hey Dimebag has some pretty cool solos and occasionally his groove style leads to some pretty cool riffs, well except for here, but perhaps that's because theres so little of it. More than half the guitar work has been consumed by midpaced downtuned chugging and riffs that are little more than a couple guitar effects thrown together ad nauseum. Then what's left sounds like Dimebag's typical style and still yields very little results. I mean its moderately heavy, certainly on par with any of his previous work with Pantera but really its just monotonous. Any riffs on here that are of interest get played out more than they should until your glad to see them go. The solos are implemented far less here and seem pretty copy and paste from his work with Anthrax and that's about all I have to say about them.

There's also Vinnie of course, he plays at a midpaced tempo to match Dimebag and never really experiments, just uses some simple drumming patterns. There is also our bass player who was usually mixed out, I'm just going to say if your in a nu-metal band and you want to cut out the bass then you have already failed. When he is in the mix though it doesn't matter much, he just adds some groove lines (more groovy than Dimebag's work here actually) in a fuzzy bass tone, these parts are still amongst the best on the album however.

Final opinion, just don't pick this up. Unless you're a die hard fan of either or both of the Abbots or maybe a completionist trying to grab anything affiliated with any former members of Pantera then I just wouldn't grab it. I just don't see the appeal in it, I mean maybe if your a nu-metal fan than you might take a look on it but even then you would make better use of your time poking into another band's work.