Pantera

[i]Cowboys From Hell[/i] wasn’t merely Pantera’s breakthrough album — it was a call to arms, a promise to plow over anyone stupid enough to get in the way of four wild-eyed Texans. These are the songs that changed [i]everything[/i] about extreme music in the ’90s, from the chainsaw-yanking chords of “Walk” to the post-hardcore head rush of “F*****g Hostile.” Hell, even Pantera’s power ballads feel like a battering ram to the face (listen: the high note-hammering climax of “Cemetery Gates” and the elbow-throwing choruses of “This Love”). While it grabs tracks from all of their key albums, our Next Steps focuses on the platters that set up Pantera to be superstars, including their anvil-dropping [i]Vulgar Display of Power[/i].

In the minds of many critics and fans, Pantera’s [i]Vulgar Display of Power[/i] smacked a stake into the barely beating heart of hair metal. It’s easy to hear why, as underground-and-up favorites like “Rise” and “Regular People (Conceit)” shed the pinched, Maiden-like melodies of Pantera’s old records (Phil Anselmo resembles a Southern-fried Rob Halford on “Shattered” and “Heresy”) for a signature groove-metal blend of bruised vocals, ravenous riffs, and airtight rhythms. And what do you know? Things got even nastier on the band’s next two albums, from the nail-gun-chased howls of “Hellbound” to the savage Dimebag Darrell leads of “Drag the Waters.” As for our Deep Cuts, they offset some side-project standouts with proven pit-pleasers.

Whether we’re talking about their final, [i]Reinventing the Steel[/i] days (the sputtering drums of “I’ll Cast a Shadow,” the dizzying guitars of “You’ve Got to Belong to It”) or a sorely overlooked roadhouse jam like “Where You Come from,” Pantera’s never stuck to one sound. The same rules — i.e. not having [i]any[/i] — apply to their side projects, from the teeth-gnashing grunge (“Pride”) and arena-ready alt-metal (“Blink of an Eye”) of Damageplan to the road-tripping classic rock of Down, a supergroup that pairs Phil Anselmo’s throat-clearing screams and hell-sent harmonies with the Sabbath-worshipping sludge of key members from Corrosion of Conformity, Eyehategod, and Crowbar.

Ask Pantera about their “overnight success” in the early ’90s and they’ll probably laugh right in your face. After all, they spent nearly ten years slugging it out on the cover-band circuit and issuing self-released albums that were closer to Mötley Crüe than trademark power-groove platters — powder-keg-popping combinations of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Slayer. Not to mention a little hardcore punk here and there, as heard on such instant classics as [i]Vulgar Display of Power[/i], and [i]Cowboys From Hell[/i], a game-changer that took the line “we’re taking over this town” [i]very[/i] seriously. Millions of albums and spotlight-seizing shows later, Pantera’s emerged as one of the most influential heavy-metal acts of all time, a group of guitar-toting, amp-testing desperados that are about as subtle as the drilled skull on [i]Far Beyond Driven[/i]’s sleeve.