'Vulgar Display of Power': How Pantera Made Their Masterpiece | Revolver

'Vulgar Display of Power': How Pantera Made Their Masterpiece

Phil Anselmo, Rex Brown, Vinnie Paul and producer Terry Date look back
vulgar display of power cover art

For most metal bands of the day, 1992 was an extremely depressing year: Nirvana's Nevermind was on top of the charts, and record buyers and record companies alike were abandoning metal in favor of grunge and alternative rock. Pantera, on the other hand, simply acted as if they didn't get the memo, and released the appropriately titled Vulgar Display of Power, an album that many still feel is their finest.

"They were as focused on Vulgar as I've seen them on any record," says producer Terry Date. "They knew what they wanted to do different from Cowboys — they knew where they wanted to improve — and their work ethic was really, really strong as a band. Vinnie [Paul], Dime, and Rex [Brown] would sit in the studio and write these songs every day. Phil [Anselmo] lived, like, two blocks away, and he'd come in when the band had worked through these song ideas, and they would refine 'em together. It was just very smooth."

One of the most simultaneously crushing and yet catchy records ever made, Vulgar Display was also where Pantera's power-groove sound really came into its own, as exemplified by tracks like "Mouth for War," "A New Level," and "Walk," which somehow managed to slam and swing ferociously at the same time. "I think that was the biggest thing about that band — the fact that they grew up around groove, and everything was based on groove," says Date.

"After Cowboys, we saw what riffs moved the audience," Anselmo says. "That's what we wanted. We didn't want people fucking sitting on their hands, or just standing and staring. We wanted fucking action. So eventually, it's like, why save the home-run riff that a lot of bands would do for the end of a song? Why don't you make the home-run riff the main riff? That's the mindset we took on, going into Vulgar Display of Power, absolutely. Take the money riff and fucking go. Beat it into the ground."

One of the band's secret weapons, of course, was the Abbott brothers' almost telepathic musical bond. "From Vulgar on, Vinnie would often run the tape deck during Dime's solos," he says. "Because when Dime wanted to go back and punch in, he would have to explain it to me, whereas with Vinnie, they would just nod at each other, or Vinnie would go, 'Do that Randy Rhoads part again' or 'Do that Van Haleny thing.' They didn't really even need to talk."

Touring with Megadeth, Skid Row, Soundgarden, and White Zombie, Pantera pushed Vulgar into the Top 50 on the Billboard album chart and left countless concert audiences stunned and deafened in their wake. "There was no band, nobody like us, and there still is no one like us live," Anselmo says proudly. "We were so relaxed — we went onstage with no set, no written-out set. We would improvise the whole goddamn thing and come off smelling like a goddamn rose most of the time. I don't remember a band touching us live, not one of them. And I respect every band we've ever played with basically, you know? But like [the late Alice in Chains frontman] Layne Staley said, 'There is one thing I've learned in the music business: You never play after Pantera.'"

But for all their deadly seriousness when it came to their live presentation, the bandmates were decidedly less serious offstage. "We were all rough and rugged when we played live, but in between songs, we were all a bunch of jokesters," Rex says. "I remember so many good times. When we were driving somewhere, there'd be cars parked by the side of the road and we'd always have ammunition somewhere, be it a quart of something or a tire iron or whatever. And if the cars had an orange sticker on the side, meaning they'd been abandoned on the road for more than 48 hours, they'd get the Pantera punishment. That thing was going down even if we had to turn back around, make a U-turn and come back. That thing's wasted. We used to throw cracked Zildjian cymbals out the window at these things and smashing the shit out of these cars. We'd just crank the window down and fling one of these things as hard as we could out the fuckin' window. Sometimes it would come back like a boomerang and hit the back of the fuckin' van. Either me or Dime would hang out the window and destroy. Phil was never into it. He thought we were just total juveniles — which we were. But that's the fun we had."