Pantera - 10's

My foes, they can't destroy my body.

Album: The Great Southern Trendkill [8th album]
Recorded: Texas & New Orleans
Genre: Metal, Groove Metal
Album Release: May 7th 1996
Length: 4:49
Producer: Pantera & Terry Date
Vocalist: Phil Anselmo [age 27]
Label: Elektra Records & East West Records

Official Audio

Charts, Streams & Sales

Australia (albums): #2 [certified gold]
Finland (albums): #4
New Zealand (albums): #4
UK (albums): #4 [1x silver]
USA (albums): #4 [1x platinum]
Spotify: 26,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 13,000,000 +

Credits

Bass, drums, guitar

Details

• On Dember 8th 2004, one of the greatest guitarists in the history of metal, Dimebag Darryl, was shot to death on stage in Ohio while playing with Damageplan. His brother, Vinnie Paul, the drummer in the same band, was sat only a few feet away. When the shots rang out Paul stood up with a jolt from behind his kit. Unfortunately, it was too late. There was nothing he could do. He couldn't save his little brother, bandmate and best friend, who had been shot in the head. Three other people died in the killing spree, four if you include the gunman himself.
  
  Dimebag and Vinnie had only started Damageplan as a way of keeping busy after the acrimonious end of Pantera in 2003. Pantera, who topped the US album charts in 1994 with 'Far Beyond Driven', would never have had such lax security arrangements, but it was Damageplan who were playing Ohio that night, and Vinnie Paul never forgot it. Paul blamed the erratic behaviour of Phil Anselmo, Pantera's vocalist, for the the downfall of the band. To make matters worse, Anselmo told Metal Hammer magazine "he deserves to be beaten severely" when talking about Dimebag. To make matters even worse the interview was published in the same year as the murders took place. The excerpt can be read below.
  
  "He would attack me, vocally. And just knowing that he was so much smaller than me I could kill him like a fuckin' piece of vapour, you know, he would turn into vapour, his chin would, at least, if I fuckin' smacked it. And he knows that. The world should know that. So physically, of course, he deserves to be beaten severely.
  
  But of course, that's criminal and I won't do such a thing. Really, I just let him prattle on. I grew very tired of it very quickly, and whenever it came up, like it has come up today, I just chose to wish them the best of luck." (Anselmo talking to Metal Hammer in 2004)
  
  Phil Anselmo wasn't invited to the funeral. Vinnie Paul vowed to never to speak to Anselmo again, and kept his word for the remainder of his life, turning down many lucrative reunion tours in the process. Vinnie Paul died in 2018 at the age of 54. Old scars often run the deepest.
  
  The man who carried out the shooting, Nathan Gale, told people Pantera were his favourite band but on that cruel December night he destroyed them forever. Whether or not Gale was motivated by the interview in Metal Hammer is a secret he took with him to the grave. Even though Pantera's 2003 split was bitter, in life things can always change. Maybe the band would have reconciled given time. When Gale slaughtered 4 innocent people he not only put to bed any chance of a real Pantera reunion he also destroyed the hopes of millions of fans who never got to see the band play live.

• 'The Great Southern Trendkill would be the fourth and final Pantera album produced by Terry Date. The band felt themselves ready to handle production duties from that point on and appointed the brothers Dimebag Darryl (guitar) and Vinnie Paul (drums) to steer their next effort. The Abbott Brothers did a stand-up job on what would be Pantera final album, 2000's 'Reinventing the Steel', and had led the band long before Anselmo joined in 1986 as a fresh-faced 18 year old. The Abbott brothers had formed the band while still in high school, handling production on their first three albums. 
  
  
• Pantera started as a glam metal band moving towards a heavier sound when they replaced original singer Terry Glaze with Phil Anselmo. Their first three albums are glam metal, though what is now thought of as Pantera proper began with their fifth release 'Cowboys From Hell'. The band themselves refer to Cowboys as their official debut.
  
  
• By 1996 the relations between the members of Pantera were at breaking point. In order to keep things civil, Phil Anselmo, who was addicted to heroin, recorded his parts for 'The Great Southern Trendkill' in New Orleans while the rest of the band recorded together in Texas. They made the album without stepping foot in the same state but it was still too close for comfort.
  
  
• '10's' is about Phil Anselmo's fight with heroin addiction. A 10 refers to an amount of heroin. The song mimics a life of constant battle with defiance expressed in the chorus "my foes, they can't destroy my body" only to be followed by the defeated "cement to dirt, disgusted with my cheapness." when his once firm resolve [cement] has crumbled into dirt under the pestering weight of addiction.
  
  
• Terry Date would go on to produce now classic metal albums such as 'Deftones - White Pony'.
  
  

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