Vulgar Display of Power
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| Studio album from Pantera | ||||
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| Label (s) | Eastwest Records | |||
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11 |
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52:50 min. |
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Vulgar Display of Power is the sixth album by the US thrash metal band Pantera . The album was produced by Terry Date and released on February 25, 1992 via Eastwest Records . For over two million copies sold in the United States, the album was awarded double platinum .
Vulgar Display of Power is one of the most influential metal albums of the 1990s and is considered to be the pioneer of groove metal . The album was also included in the reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die .
Emergence
Songwriting
After the release of the previous album Cowboys from Hell in 1990, the band played numerous tours with bands such as Judas Priest , Exodus , Sepultura , Suicidal Tendencies and Prong . When the band returned home a year later, the members took a two-week break before meeting to jam at the Pantego Sound Studio in Pantego , Texas . The studio is owned by the father of guitarist Dimebag Darrell and drummer Vinnie Paul Jerry Abott. Each of the four band members wanted to record a harder, more brutal album next than Cowboys from Hell was. The musicians had different ideas about how to achieve this goal.
Singer Phil Anselmo had started listening to hardcore punk music and wanted to emulate the honest and argumentative quality of these bands. Bassist Rex Brown, on the other hand, was listening to Metallica's black album and wanted to record exactly the opposite of it. Drummer Vinnie Paul wanted to work a lot with his double bass playing . Guitarist Dimebag Darrell brought these visions together and wrote most of the riffs and song structures. He collected the ideas on a four-track recorder and presented them to the other musicians during the jam sessions. From these jam sessions the songs A New Level , Regular People (Conceit) and No Good (Attack the Radical) developed .
According to drummer Vinnie Paul, Pantera wanted to top the previous album Cowboys from Hell with Vulgar Display of Power , with which the band would have come close to the definitive Pantera sound. Metallica's black album had been a disappointment in the eyes of Pantera. Now Pantera wanted to fill the gap that they thought left and record the heaviest album of all time.
Recordings
As with its predecessor, the band worked with producer Terry Date for the recordings. While demo recordings were made of the three previously written songs, the rest of the material was first arranged in the studio. The sound of the guitars , which had already been determined by the musicians , was refined with the help of Date. In addition to the guitars, the focus was still on the drums. Once the sound of the instruments was determined, the musicians and Terry Date began arranging the songs and recording them at the same time. Passages were put together spontaneously and intuitively . After producing Vulgar Display of Power , Pantera never pre-recorded demos again.
“We always wanted to capture the original atmosphere of the songs and the only way to get what it takes to record them as we wrote them. We just captured the natural aggression that was there. "
During the recording, Vinnie Paul took up the drums first. Then Dimebag Darrell played the guitar first and then Rex Brown the bass. When guitar and bass were out of sync , Darrell and Brown said they worked for hours to get their respective instruments to mesh and, according to Brown, "produce one big tone". In addition, because of this collaboration, which took place without modern software like Pro Tools , you would often not hear the bass. After two months, the band stopped recording and flew to Moscow to perform at the Monsters of Rock festival . In addition to Pantera, EST , The Black Crowes , Metallica and AC / DC played as headliners .
After returning from Moscow, the recordings were continued. Inspired by the gig in Moscow, the band couldn't wait to finish the recordings. According to Phil Anselmo, the music was literally bleeding out of them. Terry Date mixed the footage after the recording was finished. The musicians then flew to New York City , where the album was mastered by Howie Weinberg . When the band first heard the finished album, Dimebag Darrell cried .
“I asked him if everything was okay. And he just said, “It's perfect. It's perfect. It's exactly what I always wanted and what I've always dreamed of. "It meant so much to him that he became emotional."
publication
The album cover shows a man who is hit in the face with his fist . Many myths have circulated about this image for years . The band is said to have approached someone on the street and offered him $ 10 a hit. According to Vinnie Paul , 31 strokes were needed to get the perfect picture, his colleague Rex Brown even spoke of 32 strokes. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the album's release, the photographer Brad Guice made it clear in an interview with the US magazine Loudwire that the person in the picture named Sean Cross was not beaten. Rather, a fist was held to the face and the person was pushed a little to the side. A fan was used for the blowing hair .
“We didn't want to glorify violence , that would be a complete misinterpretation. The mood of the record is simply represented, nothing else. "
With Mouth for War , This Love , Hollow and Walk four singles were released. Except for Hollow , a music video was shot for each single , which was published on the video albums Vulgar Videos (released in 1993) and 3 Vulgar Videos of Hell (released in 1999). In 2012 the band released the previously unreleased song Piss , for which a music video was also shot. Two band members used new pseudonyms for Vulgar Display of Power . Guitarist Diamond Darrell changed his name to Dimebag Darrell and bassist Rexx Rocker became Rex Brown.
Republication
On the occasion of the album's 20th anniversary, Vulgar Display of Power was re-released on May 15, 2012. The first CD contained the album in a remastered version and as a bonus the song Piss . According to Vinne Paul, Piss was the only unreleased song in the band's history. It wasn't released in 1992 because the musicians felt it didn't go with the rest of the songs on the album. In addition, the new release contains a DVD with six songs, which was recorded when Pantera performed on the Monsters of Rock tour in Reggio nell'Emilia, Italy .
background
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The album title comes from the horror film The Exorcist , in which a Jesuit priest tries to perform an exorcism on a girl possessed by the devil . When the father asks the girl whether she should loosen her fixation in order to free herself from evil, the girl replies “That's much too vulgar a display of power.” The lyrics were written by the singer Phil Anselmo. According to his own statement, Anselmo's texts are about the truth, however ugly it may be. Anselmo took Henry Rollins' role model and his ability to write from the soul in texts that he had experienced trauma and turbulence.
Mouth for War is about channeling your hatred into something productive. In this way you can prevent other people from harming yourself or others through acts of violence by being locked up in prison . The song A New Level was written in the studio and recorded live. The text refers on the one hand to the album title and on the other hand to the experiences of the band at the festival in Moscow. According to Phil Anselmo, the song is also about a personal triumph. Walk was written for friends of the band members who suddenly treated the musicians differently after returning from the tour to the album Cowboys from Hell and thought that Pantera were now rock stars. With the text Phil Anselmo wanted to tell them to take their attitude and go. In addition, according to Dimebag Darrell, it would be about people who suddenly refer to themselves as friends to the band, but would only tell bad things about the band behind the back of the musicians.
With the song Fucking Hostile , the band criticizes the church and politics , which want to enforce a kind of censorship . As an example, Anselmo cited the lyrics of death metal bands, which in his opinion would be completely fictional. In his opinion, parents should better prepare their children for life. It also follows, according to Darrell in the song about corruption in the police . Phil Anselmo wrote the song This Love about a previous relationship that made him angry. According to Darrell, No Good (Attack the Radical) is a statement by the band against racism and violence. There are more important things than a person's skin color . With the song Rise , the band wants to encourage humanity to support other people and not just people of the same race. Live in a Hole describes the difficulties people with social phobia have and believes that isolation is the only way they can go. In doing so, however, they do not find inner peace. Hollow wrote Phil Anselmo for a friend who fell into a coma . In another interview, Phil Anselmo said that This Love and Hollow is also about the loss of people who have committed suicide , for example .
reception
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Reviews
The album received positive reviews in contemporary reviews. Götz Kühnemund from the German magazine Rock Hard compared the sound of the album "with the groovier Metallica pieces" and praised both the "massive" rhythm section as well as the "varied guitar work and the incredibly brutal, extremely raw, but always controlled vocals" Phil Anselmos. He gave the album nine out of ten points. Uwe “Buffo” Schnädelbach from the German magazine Metal Hammer , the album for a Thrash release “turned out to be astonishingly varied, because you take your lead foot off the accelerator more than once and cleverly built in a lot of cool slow or mid-tempo parts”. Schnädelbach awarded seven out of seven points. Steve Huey of the online magazine Allmusic described the album as "a rough, pulverizing, insanely intense display of naked anger and hostility". With this album, Pantera paved the way for alternative metal bands like Korn or Tool .
Chart placements
For the first time in the band's history, Pantera were able to place in the album and single charts. Vulgar Display of Power reached number 44 on the US album charts . In the United Kingdom the album was 64th and in Germany 69th. The singles Mouth for War and Walk were able to place in the British single charts, reaching positions 73 and 35 respectively.
“I sat in the studio for years reading Billboard magazine. When I read the album charts and found our album there, I was upset. Even if it was only 44th, it was indescribable. It's hard to describe how quickly it all happened. A dream came true. All the hard work paid off. "
Gold and platinum
In the United States, Vulgar Display of Power was awarded a gold record by the Recording Industry Association of America on February 9, 1993. The album went platinum on November 7, 1997 and double platinum on July 7, 2004. The album went platinum in Australia. The album was awarded gold in the UK and Canada.
meaning
The album was ranked 333 in the Rock Hard magazine's best list of 500 titles. Thomas Kupfer wrote that Vulgar Display of Power had a major influence on later nu-metal bands like Korn and summed up: " Vulgar Display of Power shows a young, hungry band at the zenith of their ability." The Rock Hard continued the album # 19 on their list of the 25 Best Thrash Metal Albums. The editors of the German magazine Visions put the album at number 122 in 2005 of their 150 albums for the ages . The British magazine Q counted Vulgar Display of Power in 2001 to the 50 hardest albums of all time.
The US online magazine Loudwire named Vulgar Display of Power the best metal album of the 1990s and the best Pantera album. In the list of the ten best Pantera songs, This Love came in seventh, Mouth for War fifth, Fucking Hostile third and Walk first. Moreover occupied Regular People Place three of a list of the ten best metal songs that have never been played live. The magazine IGN led Vulgar Display of Power at number eleven of the most influential heavy metal albums of all time. Pantera was praised for turning negative aspects of the genre such as hatred, anger, violence and despair into positive thoughts, as De La Soul did in rap .
For former drummer for the band Dream Theater Mike Portnoy , Vulgar Display of Power was the album that saved metal in the 1990s. Portnoy Dimebag also put Darrell on a par with guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads . Kerry King of the band Slayer referred to Vulgar Display of Power as Panteras Reign in Blood . According to Megadeth bassist Dave Ellefson , Pantera with Shredding , Phil Anselmo as angry vocalist, and that groove boast were three key elements for the future development of the genre.
Re-use
In the 1990s, MTV used excerpts from songs from the album for the opening and closing sequences of Headbangers Ball . The Anselmo scream "Hostile" from the song Fucking Hostile was particularly popular . The German TV broadcaster VIVA used excerpts from the video clip for Mouth for War for the opening sequence of the show Metalla . The songs Mouth for War , This Love , Rise and Regular People (Conceit) served as templates for part of the background music composed by Robert Prince for the first-person shooter Doom . The Swiss composer Stefan Keller used a riff from the song By Demons Be Driven in his work driven .
During the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, Pantera released a limited-edition t-shirt. It shows the slightly modified cover motif of the album Vulgar Display of Power . The person being hit wears a respirator, while the person being hit wears protective gloves. Below the picture are the lines “Be yourself, by yourself. Stay away from me! ”From the lyrics, which is a reminder of the spatial distance with which the virus is to be prevented from spreading. 40 percent of the proceeds are donated. By May 2020, around 100,000 US dollars were raised.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Steve Huey: Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power. Allmusic , accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Rock List Music, accessed February 28, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jon Wiederhorn: 25 Years Ago: Pantera Release the Groundbreaking 'Vulgar Display of Power'. Loudwire , accessed May 19, 2017 .
- ↑ Benjy Eisen: Q&A: Pantera's Vinnie Paul on Unearthing New Track for 'Vulgar' Reissue. Rolling Stone , accessed May 19, 2017 .
- ↑ Loudwire Staff: The Story of Pantera's 'Vulgar Display of Power' Album Cover Is Not What You Think It Is. Loudwire, accessed May 19, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d e Holger Stratmann: Productive hatred . In: Rock Hard , May 1992, p. 16
- ↑ a b c d Dave Basner: 20 Things You Might Not Know About Pantera's 'Vulgar Display of Power'. iHeartRadio , accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Amy Schiarretto: Pantera 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of 'Vulgar Display of Power' Due May 15th Loudwire, accessed on May 19, 2017 (English).
- ↑ Eduardo Rivadavia: 20 Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Pantera. Loudwire, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Thomas Kupfer: Proleten to power . In: Rock Hard, Dec 1991, p. 30
- ↑ a b Chart sources: DE UK US
- ↑ Götz Kühnemund : Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power. Rock Hard, accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Uwe "Buffo" Schnädelbach: Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power . In: Metal Hammer , March 1992
- ↑ Gold & Platinum. RIAA , accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ^ ARIA Charts - Accreditations - 1997 Albums. ARIA , accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Gold / Platinum. Music Canada , accessed June 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Rock Hard: Best of Rock & Metal , Heel-Verlag, Königswinter 2007, ISBN 3-89880-517-4 , p. 77.
- ↑ Götz Kühnemund : 250 Thrash albums that you should know . In: Rock Hard . No. 265 , June 2009, p. 75 .
- ↑ 150 Albums for Eternity , in: Visions , No. 150, p. 125
- ↑ Joe Robinson: Top 11 Metal Albums of the 1990s. Loudwire, accessed June 25, 2018 .
- ^ Eduardo Rivadavia: Pantera Albums Ranked. Loudwire, accessed June 25, 2018 .
- ↑ Amy Sciarretto: 10 Best Pantera Songs. Loudwire, accessed June 25, 2018 .
- ^ Graham Hartmann: 10 Greatest metal songs never performed live. Loudwire, accessed September 28, 2018 .
- ↑ ET: Top 25 Metal Albums. IGN , accessed June 25, 2018 .
- ^ Graham Hartmann: Metal Luminaries Reflect on the Impact of Pantera's 'Vulgar Display of Power'. Loudwire, accessed June 25, 2018 .
- ↑ PANTERA Releases Limited-Edition 'Social Distancing' T-Shirt. Blabbermouth.net, accessed April 6, 2020 .