The Great Southern Trendkill

I love Pantera. From Power Metal to Reinventing the Steel, Pantera's discography is one of the most consistently entertaining and enjoyable of any metal band. But this album, The Great Southern Trendkill is Pantera's magnum opus, for a few reasons. Up until 1996, Pantera had garnered huge commercial success with their 3 previous releases and had become one of the biggest names in heavy metal, but now Phil Anselmo had a heroine addiction. This combined with Phil's anger towards the media and society created what I would call the first genuinely angry Pantera album. My biggest bone to pick with the 2 albums before this was, although musically great, the anger in Phil and the band as a whole felt fake. Now Phil and the band is actually angry, and this genuine anger proves to be very effective.

The start of the album has the ripping title track, which maintains the groove metal ideology but the aggression of Pantera is kicked up a notch. After the listener gets a feeling of what the album will be like, War Nerve, Phil's angry song against the media, hits the listener with a groovy, brilliant riff, and this song is angrier than the last. Phil begins the song screaming "FUCK THE WORLD!", a very on the nose message, but we get this new message: Phil is pissed. Drag the Waters is a very riff based song that any Pantera fan who has listened to the previous albums will love. The first ballady song, "10's", has a mesmerizing solo, followed by another angry rant, 13 Steps to Nowhere. Now the next two tracks, Suicide Note Pt.1 and Pt.2 starts as a very ballady song with Phil considering suicide, but then Pt.2 kicks in. This is the absolute most angry song on the album, and the song where anger fuels it from start to finish. Nothing about this song is exceptionally brilliant or technical, but the grooves combined with Phil's angriest screams makes this song one of Pantera's most exciting in their discography. As if this torrent wasn't enough, the faster Living Through Me (Hell's Wrath), displays Phil's anger over his drug problem.

What can I say about Floods? It slows down the pace of the album with Dimebag's clean and melancholy riff. This is Pantera's spiritual song revealing mankind's sins and Phil asking for God's wrath, via a world-engulfing flood. Dimebag's verse riff combined with Phil's hostility towards humanity, creates the most sad feeling of any Pantera song, until we get to the solo. The solo that many metalhead rave about, and I can see why. With every bend and squeal of the guitar the solo is backed by a very groovy bass line by Rex Brown, my favorite bass line of his. The solo perfectly displays the melancholy feeling of the song, and then the outro solo, which leaves listeners contemplating all their life decisions and wrongdoings (at least that's how I feel when I hear the outro).

As this song leaves listeners breathless, this would be a perfect ending to any album, but the band still has two very groovy tracks, which return the sheer anger of the first half of the album. These two songs combine for more than 5 minutes, but after hearing Floods, this feels like the shortest 5 minutes ever. Phil ends The Underground in America famously screaming "THE TREND IS DEAD!" repeatedly. The album closes with (Reprise) Sandblasted Skin and the album ends just as furious as it began. This is a new fresh side of Pantera, unseen before and is easily much better than their previous two albums. This album is similar to Cowboys from Hell in a way that it feels new and is a very satisfying listen, making this and Cowboys from Hell my two favorite albums by Pantera. As an added bonus there is no faked "tough-guy" aspect in either of these albums. The bottom line is this album is an essential listen for any metalhead, and is the best of Pantera's catalogue.