Pantera - Cowboys From Hell
We're taking over this town.
Album: Cowboys From Hell [5th album]
Recorded: Texas
Genre: Metal, Groove Metal, Thrash Metal
Album Release: July 24th 1990
Single Release: 1990 [1st single]
Length: 4:03
Producer: Pantera & Terry Date
Vocalist: Phil Anselmo [age 22]
Label: Atco Records [subsidiary of Warner]
Music Video
Live in Moscow from 1991
Live in 1990
Demo version from 1989
Charts, Streams & Sales
Argentina (albums): 1x gold
Australia (albums): 1x gold
Japan (albums): 1x gold
UK (albums): 1x gold
USA (albums): 2x platinum
Spotify: 320,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 149,000,000 +
Guitar Worlds Greatest Guitar Albums of All Time: #11
VH1 Greatest Metal Songs: #25
Credits
Bass, drums, guitar
Details
- 'Cowboys From Hell', both the song and the album, is about about a band of outlaws riding into town hell for leather and is a great song to amp yourself up to before going on a rampage of a Saturday night out. It's kinetic, gets the adrenaline flowing and introduced Pantera to the world as something they hadn't seen before, at least by 1990, a heavy metal band from Texas.
The only thing is, is that, technically, Pantera's debut album came out in 1983 and they weren't a hardcore, groove metal band but a glam metal one. 'Cowboys From Hell' is really the bands fifth album but is their first on a major label. Having released their earlier work on small, independents the bands were allowed an opportunity to reinvent themselves and for all intents and purposes the glam Pantera and the groove Pantera are entirely different animals.
The fashion for glam metal, or hair metal as it was known, was petering out with the eighties and Pantera took the opportunity to change with it. All they really had to do was replace their vocalist Terry Glaze with an 18 year old Phil Anselmo and they were a different oufit.
In the photos above the band members are stood in roughly the same positions, with the exception of Phil Anselmo and Terry Glaze who only appear only in one photo each. That the guy on the far left is Rex Brown in both photos is astonishing. It truly shows what a perm can do to a man.
- The "Cowboys" from the title is also a reference to the Dallas Cowboys sports team, who are from the same state as the band. Pantera are from Arlington, Texas, which is only 21 miles from Dallas.
- The music video was shot at a genuine Pantera concert in Dallas.
- 'Cowboys From Hell' was first recorded in 1989 and features on one of the bands early demos.
- Groove metal is a slower form of thrash metal that has more emphasis on the rhythm section as well as an off the beat, syncopated vocal delivery. The sub-genre came about in the early 90's in large part thanks to Pantera and other similar bands such as Prong, White Zombie and Celtic Frost.
Groove metal is slower than thrash, which in no way makes it slow compared to music more generally. The bpm (beats per minute) for 'Cowboys From Hell' for example is still 115, while 'Reign in Hell' by Slayer is only 105. The slower overall tempo of groove metal gives the music more variety, by allowing the bands to play heavy metal ballads, such as Pantera's 'Cemetery Gates', which is one of their most popular songs. Thrash metal, which moved away from traditional heavy metal by upping the tempo, doesn't allow for the same variance in mood and tone and can become repetitive.
- 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.
Artwork
