PANTERA PUMMELS ACROSS AMERICA


by Ernie Thomas


    In these days of post-MTV Metallica videos and given the current
onslaught of the “nu-metal” hybrid of hardcore/metal/hip-hop, it might seem
at first glance that true heavy metal is dead.

    Word to the wise.  Never utter any semblance of such a thought in the
company of Pantera or Slayer, the righteous warriors of the old school style
who have teamed up to flip the middle finger to the watered down and
bastardized sounds that are being passed off as “heavy metal” today.  

   Just as they were getting ready to take off on the “Extreme Steel Tour”
(which includes support acts Static-X, Skrape and Morbid Angel), The Midwest
BEAT grabbed some phone time with Vinnie Paul, the slam master behind
Pantera’s pummeling and pounding.  Here’s what he has to say!


Midwest BEAT:  How long is “Extreme Steel “going to last? Is it the same
line-up everywhere and are all dates in the U.S.?

Vinnie Paul: These are all US dates and a hand full of Canadian dates. Then
we do a big festival called the ‘Beast Feast’ in Japan in August, play a
show in Hawaii, and then we’re headlining the ‘Tattoo the Planet’ tour in
Europe.  For that it’s Pantera, Slayer, Static X and two other bands.  That
goes to October 7th with the last show in Berlin.

M.B. : Then what?

V.P.: We’ll take a couple months off and then start on a new record in
January and hopefully have it out by summertime.

M.B. :  You guys have played two of the three Ozzfests, but  this year you
opted to tour on your own.  Any special reason?

V.P. :  No special reason.  It’s called Ozzfest for a reason.  It’s not
called Pantera fest.  We’ve been lucky to be a part of it for two out of the
last three years, but we felt it was to step out as a headliner and do our
own tour.  We really wanted to bring something to the metal fans that was a
more extreme. We wanted to give them a heavier bill than what Ozzfest was
presenting this year.  That was really our goal behind the ‘Extreme Steel’
tour.

M.B. :  Any reason why you picked those particular bands for this tour?  Why
present such a massive package at indoor arenas instead of hitting the sheds
like all the other big summer tours do?

V.P :  We just felt like those were the right kind of bands that we’d want on
tour with us.  We love Slayer and have wanted to tour with them for a while. 
It finally worked out that we could make it happen.   We know our fans are
really gonna appreciate getting 5 or 6 hours of non-stop kick ass metal,
indoors where they can enjoy the air conditioning.
    After being a part of Ozzfest and other outdoor arena tours, including
our own headline tours of the past, we just didn’t like subjecting the fans,
the crew and ourselves to the elements. Such as... unknown thunderstorms that
just pop up, 118 degree temperatures, 90% humidity, mosquito swarms that
kamakazee your ass in the middle of a show.
    All kinds of shit happens in them outdoor shows.  When the weather is
perfect there is nothing better than playing outdoors, but there aren’t
enough perfect nights.  So we figured that we’d take advantage of all the
empty hockey  arenas and not deal with all that crap.

M.B :  Have you started writing for the next album yet?

V.P. :  We’ll start writing in January.  We always get ideas and collect
ideas when we’re on the road.  Darrell’s got probably 50 tapes full of riffs
and ideas and Phillip’s got 24 notebooks full of lyrics, you know.  We get
lots of ideas when we’re on tour.  Then when we get off the road, we take a
couple weeks off, maybe a month or two, and then head to the studio.
Everybody’s just overflowing with ideas and piece of songs and we just go to
work.

M.B.:  Do you have a working title yet for the next one?

V.P. :  No not yet.

M.B :  What’s the next step in the musical evolution for I mean do you see
this album going anywhere in a different or new direction?

V.P :  I would say all our records have a different identity.  I don’t think
any of them sound like a clone of each other or anything. I just think we’ll
be another two years smarter, another two years skilled at our instruments
and the songwriting will go in whatever direction whatever mood we’re feeling
at that time.  But you know I really loved what we did with ‘Reinventing
Steel’.  I really enjoyed the songs and playing them live.  You know it was
one of our really main focuses on this record was to write songs that were
fun for us to play live.  You know when we did the ‘Trendkill’ album they
were really involved songs and had a lot of layering on the vocals and stuff.
They were really difficult for us to reproduce live and feel comfortable
with, so that was one of the main thing we watched for on this past record. 
So with this next record, we’ll probably continue to go in with that kind of
attitude again.

M.B. :  What can people expect to hear on this tour?

V.P. :  I’d say we do a lot of unexpected things.  We are doing some things
that people haven’t heard us play live before.  We did that on the last tour
too with songs like ‘Slaughtered,’ which we hadn’t done since like ‘94. 
We’re definitely diggin down deep and moving some things around for this set
list.  Of course, there are some songs that you just have to play. You know
it would be like going to see KISS and them not playing ‘Rock and Roll All Nig
ht’, you know? We don’t want to bum anyone out, so songs like ‘Cowboys From
Hell,’ ‘Walk’ and stuff like that are always gonna be part of the live set
no matter what.  But we’re definitely trying some stuff this time out that
people aren’t accustom to hearing from us.

M.B. :  I heard something about you and Dimebag collaborating with country
music outlaw David Allen Coe?

V.P. :  Yeah, we got a little thing going. A country metal hoedown that we’ve
been throwing together for about a year now.  It’s just fun stuff.  We ran
into each other a while back and I’ve been a David Allen Coe fan forever. I
gave him my home videos and stuff and he called up one day and goes – ‘Man,
you guys are just like me.  You’re total outlaws with the kind of music you
play.  We need to hook up and write some songs together.’ 
    We hooked up and started jamming.  The project is called Rebel Meets
Rebel and it’s been a blast.  It’s all recorded and done.  All we have to
do, is find the time to mix it down. Hopefully, it will be out sometime in
the very near future.

M.B. :  What kind of sound is it?

V.P. :  Just a hard rock band with a Country & Western singer.  It’s really
different.  Some of the tunes are uptempo thrash metal things and some of
them are just like plain old rock ‘n’ roll things.  It’s very unique and it
will be pretty cool when people get to hear it.

M.B.:  What do you credit Pantera's longevity to?

V.P :  It’s an old school secret.  It’s called...touring, touring, touring,
then touring some more.  It’s called not depending on radio or on MTV to take
your music to the people, but to do it yourself physically. 
    These bands come out today and get a huge hit on MTV and they’re big on
the radio and all of a sudden they sell three or four million records.  Then
two years later, they make a new record and guess what?  MTV and radio have
moved on to the next ‘flavor of the month’ and they don’t like their new
single.  So their career is over. 
    If you go out and tour and you play your ass off live for people, they
will make sure you have a career in two or five or ten years. Our fans are
the  die hard kind of people who live for music. Real music fans love music
and are not about – ‘What's the new hot thing?’ Real music fans find a
favorite band and they’re always there and they always support you.

M.B. :  Has the label ever tried to squeeze you guys to go in a more
commercial direction?

V.P. :  They’d love it if we had a triple-platinum record, but I think they
gave up on that notion a long time ago just because we really put our foot
down.  They know that we’ve been a very successful act for them and for them
to really try to mettle in what we do, would fu*k up the charisma or
whatever it is that we’ve got going.
    All our records are gold.  Four out of the five have gone platinum, so
this latest one will get there eventually through the non-stop touring.
     We put this record out in the middle of all this hip-hop rap stuff.  We
could have waited for that whole scene to die down a little, but we didn’t. 
It was a pretty bold move to put it out when we did and we’re happy with what
its done.  For the most part, our shows have been sold out all across the
board, so people are  getting a good dose of it and understanding it and
learning it. 

M.B. :  When all is said and done how would you like the rock ‘n’ roll
history books to remember Pantera?

V.P. :  That we were a band that didn’t kiss ass to the system.  That we went
and played live and did all the things that people told us we couldn’t do. 
I’d like it to say that we stayed true to our roots and in the end we made
ourselves and our fans happy and that's the bottom line.

M.B. :  What's the one single piece of advice that you could offer to a young
metal band?

V. P. :  Play live! It doesn’t matter if it’s in front of ten people or ten
thousand people.  You can play in your garage all day and all night and then
when you get on that stage for the first time or the tenth time it’s like
going through a maze in a haunted house.  All of a sudden these lights are in
your face, you can’t see the frets on the fingerboard you know it’s just a
whole different vibe. 
    The experience that comes with playing live is one of the things, I
think, most of the bands today lack. They might sound great in the studio and
great on the record, but you go see them live and they’re tripping over their
own shoe strings and they just don’t know how to handle themselves on stage. 
    Playing live is something that every young band really needs to
experience and unfortunately it’s a little more difficult these days that it
used to be,  ‘cause there’s not as many night clubs and live venues for them
to play.  Even if you’re not making a dime.. go play live!




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