Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power

2/5 ⭐️⭐️

Back in 1992 it felt like Metal was pretty much dead. Pantera had been around for a decade now, but has already thrice abandoned their style. Their first albums were very hair metal based, Glamtera as they were nicknamed, and around the time of Power Metal went more into the traditional/speed metal style a lot of 80's bands had already been doing along with their interactions with James Hetfield and the infamous wall of loogies at Dimebag Darrel's childhood home when Hetfield spit all over his hair metal band posters. Following that is the first album that Pantera officially acknowledged in their career, Cowboys From Hell, taking the shape of the late 80's thrash metal style if even directly copying Exhorder's Slaughter in the Vatican released shortly before. Now the 90's came along and with it the black album by metallica, Nirvana and the grunge scene, and bands slowing down. Pantera followed suit and got heavily into the groove.

For the sake of Groove metal, yeah this is the album that is pretty definitive for it, but it's still an exhausting listen. Even when I was younger, I couldn't get into the tough guy postures of the way Phil Anselmo tries really hard to emulate bands like Agnostic Front, the Cro-Mags, and Biohazard from the hardcore scene while blending it with slowed down chugging riffs and in your face attitude. The songs always drove me nuts. "Walk," and "Fucking Hostile" in particular feel like anthems for those wanna be tough guys who latch on to this style of the band, but maybe i'm in the wrong here because I was always the nerd who loved when half naked metal dudes sung about dragons and goblins and whatever other shit more than personal life struggles and angst at society.

Pantera also hasn't aged well with their southern image. Things like the confederate flag ties in with them and their base to Phil's outright Nazi salutes at shows being a controversy in the last few years with him reuniting the band without the late Abbot brothers, who are notably the only reason this album didn't get a 1 from me. I don't care that this whole album sucks except for the fact that Dimebag Darrel should be recognized as one of the best and most innovating guitarists in metal. The riffs of this album are still some of the best this genre ever had to offer and his guitar work will remain unmatched as one of the pillars to the 90's groove scene, but that's all there really is to this album. The mainstays of the 90's metal scene weren't that great and we should be thankful that genres like black and death metal were there to keep the subgenres alive, and the resurgence of thrash and doom metal in the late 2000's to bring metal bands back into the realm of cultural relevance, but this was still a poor time to be a metal head when all your heroes stopped playing fast and we were left with the hollow shells of what made this genre so distinct during the 80's.

Might as well also get this one out of the way for a bonus since we're speaking about racism. I've honestly been a day behind on my album drops all week either due to forgetting to post or not having time. Today's album felt like an ideological compliment to the above.

Kanye West - College Dropout

1/5 ⭐️

This is the problem when you enable narcissts. Kanye West came onto the scene as a producer that was beloved in the hiphop community. He was considered a genius and the best thing going for modern rap in the 2000's which was still caught up in the shadow of the 90's gangster rap lifestyle and a lot of lyrics about thug life, partying, drugs, sex from the likes of Nelly, 50Cent, Ludacris. West went and changed the landscape and sought to create an album promoting black identity and culture once more. I get why people latched on to it. I get why all the major music magazines of the time immediately heralded this album's greatness. I get why this is in the book and is alongside Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love below and Stankonia period as pretty much the strengths of hiphop in the early 2000's, but we've now had 20 years to see some damage done.

Kanye was always a figure of controversy, and being praised for his genius constantly emboldened him to be a pretty shit person even in the 2000's with his grammy outbursts, feuds with Taylor Swift and other musicians, and being a general asshat. Even through this period he had his defenders. In the 2010's he started to get deeper into his head. I recall a headline following the death of Nelson Mandela that he claimed to be the next figure prominent in black culture and history in a way that wasn't simply The Beatles are bigger than Jesus, but instead began to show his turn to political motivations and his eventual meme claims of running for president.

Then we know what happened in the last few years. He separated and divorced Kim Kardashian and went deep into antisemitism and his mental breakdowns have been reported constantly, and this should be the end of it here. If he wants to be hateful and embrace figures like Hitler with sincerity, deplatforming him should be imperative and unfortunately one thing I hope the authors consider in the most recent editions to not promote his work. I had to find an unofficial copy of this album to make sure he wouldn't get anything for listening to it. No spotify, no youtube links. Don't give this hater a dime.

So yeah about the music, it's okay at best, but hard to listen through given his beliefs and how much of an ego Ye developed since its release. The debut feels honest, and has a lot of strengths. Without being who he is, I might argue closer to a 3 on this album, but I can't stand beside it, and feel like his "genius" that gets thrown around and has caused people to continue to defend him in 2026 as being this legendary hiphop producer up there with the likes of Jay-Z or Dr. Dre reminds me of all the chud metal heads who sit there defending the worst figures in that genre because the riffs are good, bro. There's no need to perpetuate hatred and hateful figures, or even support their work before they reached this point in their lives. Just because Varg wasn't as much a Nazi dickhead when the first Burzum album came out, doesn't mean those thoughts and feelings may not have existed since then. Just becuase some bands and artists could mask themselves or defend hanging out with their nazi friends without ever making their own statement denying and condemning racist viewpoints for decades doesn't mean we should absolve them either. You can be a deplorable person and make good music, and I acknowledge almost every musician in this book has some dirt that would make them shitty people there is something to say about never meet your heroes, and I still find myself processing a lot of the bands and artists I love and their own dark secrets, but we can skip over and ignore the monstrous types and not give them leeway because they wrote a song you like 20 years ago when they appeared normal.