ONE YOU MAY HAVE MISSED IN 2010: HELLYEAH’S STAMPEDE
[Like my colleague Vince Neilstein, I too feel compelled to share with you, the readers, some “under-appreciated gems” that deserve your attention and consideration for your personal “Best of 2010” lists. Some of these may have suffered from lack of promotion, or simply may have gotten lost in the shuffle amid higher profile releases. Hopefully this informal series will help rectify that — and not give too much away in advance of the publications of the staff lists on December 16.]
Pantera, much like their cultural forebears The Beatles, assuredly will never reunite. Even if we could discount the untimely, cataclysmic death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott in 2004 at the hands of a mentally disturbed assassin whose very name doesn’t deserve repeating, the fractures that resulted in the band’s dissolution have only deepened with time, categorized by seemingly endlessly feuding between factions of the surviving members and their surrogates. This year’s expanded 20th anniversary reissue of Cowboys From Hell — coincidentally timed with a boxed reissue of John Lennon’s solo discography — provides a view of what we can expect as Pantera’s legacy matures and amplifies, namely that music industry machinery will take advantage of contractual opportunities while the estranged and quarreling factions collect deserved checks and dangle demos, live versions, and previously unreleased “vault tracks” (such as “The Will to Survive”) to disproportionately feed our insatiable hunger for more.
Still, the three surviving members all continue to make provocative new music. While Rex Brown and the ever-controversial Phil Anselmo paired up in Southern stoner metal supergroup Down while drummer/virtuoso Vincent Paul Abbott (aka Vinnie Paul) proves he’s more McCartney than Ringo with the Wings-esque Hellyeah. Stampede is the second offering from the latter band — which features members of metal “also-rans” Mudvayne and Nothingface — yet it marks a mature, artful progression that ought to finally cement Paul’s cultural contribution to heavy metal. Despite a few earnest, well-intentioned missteps with Rebel Meets Rebel and on Hellyeah’s self-titled debut from 2007, Paul’s almost megalomaniacal commitment to quality shines through on tracks like “Hell Of A Time” and “Cowboy Way”, the latter a cultivated summation of his raison d’être.
Even before John Lennon’s eerily similar murder at the age of 40, the unlikelihood of the Fab Four regrouping for a new album or tour was countered only by a deeply felt hopefulness in the hearts of their fans. Such hope is evident in the profound, yet guileless music of Vinnie Paul.
-GS
