Review by Daniel for Pantera - Cowboys From Hell (1990)

Let me set the scene for you. It’s mid-1990 & a fourteen year-old boy (admittedly a very good looking one) sits in his bedroom in Sydney late at night with his headphones on listening to the radio with a cassette player set to record the show at the same time. The track changes & a chuggy throb starts up that’s unlike anything the youth has ever heard before. A guitar appears & starts playing a palm-muted melodic run then all of a sudden… IT HITS! The whole band kicks in & starts slamming out one of the tightest, chunkiest grooves metal had ever heard to the time. It's fair to say that the young man’s ears have more than pricked up by this stage but what’s this? The guitar solo comes in unaccompanied in a similar way to his idol Eddie Van Halen. And Jesus Christ this dude can shred! He’s got chops for days, weeks & years! And those vocals! They exude a powerful hardcore attitude but still maintain a strong sense of melody. The boy would replay this song repeatedly over the next week until the late night metal show returned the following week. This time we had another inclusion from this supposedly new band Pantera but it was a heavy metal inspired ballad with soaring vocals & dive-bombing guitar solos like none he’d heard before. This ongoing week-to-week process would go on for some time before the boy felt the need to pick the full album up through tape trading & he would give it a good ol' thrashing over the next year or so. Pantera would release their breakout sixth album in 1992 & would subsequently change the world with their story going down in metal history for all eternity.

I imagine that this would be a fairly familiar story for many of us but it’s one that I remember vividly. It was immediately apparent that there was something different about Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell”, an album that most fans assumed was their recorded debut until they’d learn otherwise. You see Pantera had begun life as a decidedly run-of-the-mill heavy metal band with an unusually talented lead guitar virtuoso in their early teens under the guidance of Darrell & Vinny’s record-producing father. They’d release four albums between 1983 & 1988 that would drift a long way under my radar before finally discovering a new sound & taking it to the world. The resulting “Cowboys From Hell” album not only showcased that new direction to the world but it would also signal somewhat of a changing of the guard for a thrash metal scene which was starting to decline in the wake of the fast ascending grunge phenomenon that would completely explode the following year. But listening back now it’s hard to deny that “Cowboys From Hell” was very much a transitional album too as the tracklisting doesn’t completely embrace this new sound (known as Groove Metal) at the expense of past glories. I think it’d be more accurate to suggest that it incorporates it as the primary source of creativity while blending it with more familiar sounds. As a result, I find it hard to deny that this is as much a thrash record as it is a groove metal one with the remnants of Pantera’s Judas Priest worshipping US power metal experimentation still showing their head on quite a few occasions.

I think it’s important to note that if I had of rated this album back in the day I would likely have scored it a bit higher than I have here but it’s also worth mentioning that I’ve somehow managed to shun it completely for a good couple of decades which seemed kinda strange too. When listening to “Cowboys From Hell” with new ears now though it’s certainly not a perfect record & I can easily see why it wasn’t the soundtrack for my youth that it was for so many others. You see it hasn’t aged as well as I’d hoped. The production sounds kinda dated now, particularly the rhythm guitar tone which left so many jaws on the ground back in the day. It’s also easy to forget that there are three or four weaker tracks amongst the twelve on offer. No weak ones mind you, it’s just important to recognise that it wasn’t all hits. I have to admit that the whole groove metal thing isn’t really my cup of tea & that’s reflected in my opinion on some of the supposedly classic tracks on the album. Songs like the title track & “Domination” don’t smash me like they do/did other metal fans. I certainly like them (& I adore the guitar work in particular) but they aren’t going to see me reaching for my elite scores. Those are reserved for the tracks that steer away from the new groove metal sound with thrash metal anthem “Message In Blood” being the clear album highlight for me. It’s interesting that it’s also one of the least popular tracks on the album but that’s not unusual for me. The other track that completely slays is the classic heavy metal ballad “Cemetery Gates”. The main riff has clearly been inspired by Randy Rhoads era Ozzy Osbourne & is one the greatest in the history of metal in my opinion, particularly when used in conjunction with Phil Anselmo’s wonderfully emotive chorus hook. What an amazing climax Darrell & Phil created at the end too!

The new groove metal sound is best championed on the title track, “Primal Concrete Sledge”, “Clash With Reality”, “Medicine Man” & “The Sleep”. “Heresy”, “Message In Blood” & “The Art Of Shredding” are pure thrash metal though while tracks like “Psycho Holiday”, “Cemetery Gates” & “Shattered” give hints towards US power metal & even your more traditional heavy metal. The fact that you can very easily differentiate the different songs & parts of songs into their various categories tells you that Pantera’s sound was still a work in progress at this stage. It was a very impressive work in progress of course but I wouldn’t say that “Cowboys From Hell” is where we see groove metal being truly defined. That would have to wait for Pantera’s 1992 sixth album “Vulgar Display Of Power”, a record that I’ve now decided I appreciate a touch more than this one after all these years. There can be no denying the power of this band as a unit though. The rhythm section were as tight as you’d find & when they hit on one of their classic grooves it draws a physical response from the listener. For me though I’d suggest that there’s not a lot of depth to some of the groovier material outside of that head-nodding, body swaying thing that happens. I find songs like “Heresy”, “Domination”, “Clash With Reality” & “The Sleep” to be more of a pleasant experience than essential listening. Phil’s vocal performance still has one foot in the higher register Rob Halford camp most of the time & I wonder whether my knowledge of his screamier & more aggressive hardcore-inspired future is seeing me subconsciously craving a bit of that when listening to “Cowboys From Hell” these days.

Ultimately it’s very hard to be critical of this record as it sounded so fresh at the time & changed the metal landscape forever in several ways. While my score is still a good one it’s definitely limited by my musical comfort zones. I think I might need to revisit some of Pantera’s later works over the next few months to see how those records have been treated by time too. I suspect that I might find at least one of those to overtake the two early 90’s big boys at this point in my life.

For fans of Soulfly, Sepultura & Exhorder.