377. Pantera / Far Beyond Driven. 1994. 3/5

While many bands that I have reviewed in recent times had their problems negotiating their way through the early 1990’s due to the changing musical landscape that they faced, the opposite seemed to be the case for Pantera. Having already made the jump to tear away from their hair metal roots late in the 1980’s decade, their journey towards the groove metal sound they created for themselves had occurred before the tidal wave of grunge in 1991 had arrived, and as such they had already set their course on a different path well before so many other bands had to make a deciion about their future direction. From the wonderful guitar based hard core sound of “Cowboys from Hell” to the much heavier groove orientation of “Vulgar Display of Power”, Pantera tore through those indecision years of hair and heavy metal with their own brand and picked up fan adulation and momentum along the way.
The tour to promote “Vulgar Display of Power” had included many places they had not been to before and included being a part of the Monsters of Rock festival in Italy, before the band came back to the studio to write and record their follow up album.
Given that the band had steered the Pantera battle cruiser so expertly through the waters of the early 1990’s, they now needed to find the way they wanted to continue on this voyage. They were at the precipice of a new dawn in the evolving of the metal genre, one that in many ways they were leading. What was necessary was to decide just what they wanted to achieve with their own sound now that they had begun that route, and just how that would sound once they released their next album. Stay the course, and hold where they were, or take the next step and make things more extreme than they had already gone. Pantera was not averse to making great changes to their sound, and the next step in their evolution could have been the make or break of that course.

Pantera had been a polarising band from the outset, and the arrival of “Far Beyond Driven” didn’t change that. The fact that this album went straight to number one on the album charts in both the US and Australia shows that the fan base was awaiting its arrival and bought it en masse when it was released. And the album delivers more of where the direction of “Vulgar Display of Power” was heading musically by continuing in a very groove metal direction as Phil Anselmo’s vocals moved to an even more aggressive growl away from what he had first been known for, with Dimebag Darrell’s guitar finding its place to crunch those riffs and the squeal in the solo breaks, all held together by Vinnie Paul’s drum beat and Rex Brown’s tuneful bass guitar.
The album opening is straight in your face, upon you before you have barely pressed the play button. “Strength Beyond Strength” attacks you from the outset blasting out of the speakers at pace which careers along for the first minute or so before pulling back into the halting slow grind pace for the remainder of the track. For new listeners it is a confusing opening, where you think you are going to be getting an album at that high tempo but then find it dropped back before you know it. This segues straight in to “Becoming”, a song that throws all of Dimebag’s guitar squeal tricks into the fray. Lyrically, there is a lot going on here, and even for me in my mid-20's it was a bit beyond the singable options in some of the songs. To say Anselmo has tickets on himself in certain songs would be being kind, and he’s certainly entitled to write what he likes. Some of it is a bit cringeworthy though, even for the age. “5 Minutes Alone” carries on the same musical direction, and some may feel at this point that there hasn’t been a lot of change between songs, that there is a similar theme running throughout. Not an unfair comparison to make. The first single “I’m Broken” increases the passion and intensity in its own way, and it would be fair to wonder how Phil has any vocal chords left after this album’s opening. Also, is there not a lot of similarity in this track to “Becoming”? Or is it just me?
“Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills” changes the course of the album somewhat. Rex Brown once suggested that the song came from a jam, Vinnie drumming and Dimebag messing around with his pedal, and they ALL said “What the hell is that”? To be fair, most people who listen to the song think the same thing, and openly wonder how this made the cut for the album. And the lyrics... far out... seriously childish... but I guess they all had to agree on it. Fair amount of rubbish there though. This song pretty much seemed to kill this album off for me when I started listening to it. The banality of the lyrics and the utter boredom of the music is all I think about when I have to listen to this song.
The middle of the album recovers this slightly, though the length of the tracks now adds to the drama. There are some reasonable groove riffs in here and Anselmo’s vocals aren’t quite as abrasive, but the songs stretch too long. Seven minutes for “Hard Lines, Sunken Cheeks” and over six minutes for “25 Years” does stretch the friendship a tad. “Slaughtered”, musically at least, is one of the better songs here, though the lyrics again are a nonsense.
The back end of the album has some good moments along the way. “Shedding Skin” is more moderately toned than most of the tracks here, “Use My Third Arm”, when it breaks out into the faster paced thrash-like moments, actually takes on the better parts of the album, while “Throes of Rejection” has its own style of enamour. “Planet Caravan”, the cover of the classic Black Sabbath song, is firstly a strange song for the band to cover, and secondly a strange song to complete the album. It’s quite a good version of the song, but after everything that comes before it, why is THIS the song that closes out the album?

This is by far the heaviest album Pantera released at this point of their career, but it came at the cost of the music. “Cowboys from Hell” had real singing, not shouting and screaming from Anselmo, and as a result Dimebag’s guitar riffs and solos were more measured, still looking to create a melodic environment rather than just crushing heavy riffs ad infinitum to sell this alongside how the vocals now come through. That’s a band choice, and one that a majority of fans seem to enjoy. I’m all for heavy, but not just for heavy’s sake.
Panera have never been a massive favourite of mine. I enjoy them in small doses, and I definitely enjoy the less extreme more than the more extreme. This is the more extreme. I was on a bus in Sydney on the night Pantera played their first ever gig in Sydney on the tour to promote this album, and there were a lot of metalheads on the same bus coming home from the gig. I asked them how it was, and they all revelled in telling me how awesome it was. When I was asked why I didn’t go (I was wearing some form of black metal shirt) I simply said I didn’t think Pantera were very good. This received a more violently aggressively voiced reply than I expected.
Over the years I have listened to this album sporadically. I never bought it. My CD copy was given to me by a friend who told me when he did that “I thought it was going to be great but it isn’t” and that because I collected albums that I would like it. And for the most part it sits on the CD shelves. It has come out for the last 2-3 weeks as I prepared this episode, and I won’t deny that through my stereo in the metal cavern this still packs a punch. It is a wall of noise. And there are songs, and even pieces of songs, that I have really enjoyed again through this period. The lyrics are generally awful, and the music does get routine and overbearing, but it isn’t a bad album. For me, I would consider it an average album. I don’t hate it, and I don't love it. And for a guy who doesn’t hate Pantera, but also doesn’t love them, I guess that is enough.