August 2020 Feature Release - The Pit Edition
It's now August which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter.
This month's feature release for The Pit is 1990's genre-defining groove metal masterpiece "Cowboys From Hell" from Texan outfit Pantera. It saw the band veering drastically away from their glam/heavy metal roots with a fresh & substantially heavier sound that would become one of the primary influences for 90's metal all over the world. It's a thrashier record than it's world-beating follow-up "Vulgar Display Of Power" & fans are often split over which is the superior Pantera release. We're keen to hear what you think on this critically important matter.
https://metal.academy/releases/2875
I gave this 4 stars on my review here purely because the album hadn't stood the test of time well and needed Heresy and Shattered to be left on the cutting room floor in all honesty. A landmark album for me growing up no doubt and for a debut record it was a cracker. The darker edge to tracks such as Medicine Man are where my preferences lie on this record though even though before I had the album I played the video for the title track to death on my VCR after I recorded an episode of RAW Power with it on. More of a fan of the follow and Far Beyond Driven nowadays but the debut still holds a respectful score.
4/5
I got onboard with "Cowboys From Hell" at around the time of release & it had already made a significant impact on me by the time "Vulgar Display Of Power" came along. For that reason along with the fact that it's a touch thrashier, I think I preferred "Cowboys From Hell" over "Vulgar Display Of Power" for many years. But in recent times I've started to doubt that position. Particularly after reviewing "Vulgar Display Of Power" earlier this year. It's been a long time since I've revisited "Cowboys From Hell" though so maybe it's time to see how time has treated it. No matter where it sits in the Pantera discography though, it was the shot in the arm that the metal scene needed at the time.
I wrote my review for this album a while ago and it shows, since it has a very different style than what I write now. I obviously knew about Pantera and songs like "Cowboys From Hell" and "Walk", but never checked them out until I decided I was going to school myself on old school Thrash Metal by going through Slayer's, Metallica's, and Megadeth's full discographies (give or take) one week. One thing led to another and I checked out Pantera's Cowboys From Hell and while I think it's their best album by a long shot, I still agree with my old review for the most part. Pantera is all about the riffs and while there are some seriously good ones, I can only handle so much of their style over the course of this album. Anything else other than the syncopated groovy riffing comes across as pretty weak, so Cowboys From Hell becomes a chore to listen to all the way through for me.
I might re-write my review in order to modernize it a bit, but I think my main point remains the same, looking back. Not a bad album by any means, but hardly a classic for me.
3.5/5
I gave this 4 stars on my review here purely because the album hadn't stood the test of time well and needed Heresy and Shattered to be left on the cutting room floor in all honesty. A landmark album for me growing up no doubt and for a debut record it was a cracker. The darker edge to tracks such as Medicine Man are where my preferences lie on this record though even though before I had the album I played the video for the title track to death on my VCR after I recorded an episode of RAW Power with it on. More of a fan of the follow and Far Beyond Driven nowadays but the debut still holds a respectful score.
4/5
We're just ignoring all their previous albums are we? 
It really says something that no one else picked that up until now, doesn't it? I think we've all probably referred to "Cowboys From Hell" as Pantera's debut at some point (despite the fact that I quite like 1984's "Projects In The Jungle" album).