PANTERA - THE GREAT SOUTHERN TRENDKILL

THE GREAT SOUTHERN TRENDKILL

Pantera

Songwriters: VINCENT ABBOTT; REX BROWN, DARRELL ABBOTT; PHIL ANSELMO & PANTERA

Country: u. s. a.

Album: the great southern trendkill

label: east west records

GENRE: GrOOVE METAL

Year: 1996

Pantera(/pænˈtɛrə/) was an American heavy metal band from Arlington, Texas, formed in 1981. The group's best-known lineup consisted of the Abbott brothers—drummer Vinnie Paul and guitarist Dimebag Darrell—along with vocalist Phil Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown. In addition to their development and popularization of the groove metal subgenre, Pantera is credited (along with others such as Testament, Sepultura and Machine Head) for being part of the second wave of thrash metal scene from the late 1980s to early-to-mid 1990s.

Having started as a glam metal band, Pantera released three albums in the mid-1980s with founding member Terry Glaze as lead vocalist. Looking for a new and heavier sound, Pantera replaced Glaze with Anselmo in late 1986 and released Power Metal in 1988. The band secured a record deal with the major label Atco the following year. With its fifth album, 1990's Cowboys from Hell, Pantera popularized the groove metal genre, while its 1992 follow-up Vulgar Display of Power exhibited an even heavier sound. Far Beyond Driven (1994) debuted at number one on the Billboard 200.

Tensions began to surface among the band members when Anselmo became addicted to heroin in 1995; he almost died from an overdose in 1996. These tensions resulted in the recording sessions for The Great Southern Trendkill(1996) being held separately. The ongoing tension lasted for another seven years, during which only one studio album, Reinventing the Steel (2000), was recorded. Pantera went on hiatus in 2001 but was disbanded by the Abbott brothers in 2003 amid communication problems and their conclusion that Anselmo would not return to the band.

The Abbott brothers went on to form Damageplan, while Anselmo continued work on several side projects, including Down, which Brown joined as well. On December 8, 2004, Darrell was shot and killed on stage by a mentally unstable fan during a Damageplan concert in Columbus, Ohio. Vinnie Paul went on to form Hellyeah after his brother's death, and died of heart failure in 2018, leaving Brown and Anselmo as the only surviving members of the band's best-known lineup.

The Great Southern Trendkill is the eighth studio album by American heavy metal band Pantera, released on May 7, 1996 by EastWest Records. It reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 chart, and stayed on the chart for 16 weeks. Due to tension and conflicts within the band, Phil Anselmo recorded the vocals alone at Trent Reznor's Nothing Studios in New Orleans while Dimebag Darrell, Rex Brown and Vinnie Paul recorded the music at Chasin Jason Studios in Dalworthington Gardens.

It's wearing on my mind, I'm speaking all my doubts aloud

You rob a dead man's grave, then flaunt it like you did create

If I hit bottom and everything's gone

In the great Mississippi, please, drown me and run

It's digging time again, you're nurturing the weakest trend

Those with the heart and the brain to get past this

Can spot a pathetic without even asking

Fuck your magazine, and fuck the long dead plastic scene

Pierce a new hole, if hell was "in" you'd give your soul

The Great Southern Trendkill

That's right

The Great Southern Trendkill

Fuck, yeah

Buy it at a store, from MTV to on the floor

You look just like a star, it's proof you don't know who you are

If I hit bottom and everything's gone

In the great Mississippi, please, drown me and run

It's bullshit time again, you'll save the world within your trend

Those with the heart and the brain to get past this

Can spot a pathetic without even asking

Politically relieved, you're product sold and well received

The right words spoken gold, if I was God you'd sell your soul to

The Great Southern Trendkill

That's right,

The Great Southern Trendkill

Fuck yeah.

Vinnie Paul