A crippled America - a pipe dream buttfucked.

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

27/03/94 : Far Beyond Driven - Pantera


This is our first visit with Pantera, although they've had a few mentions in the "customers also listened to" sections for albums I really didn't like, so let's just say my expectations are not high.

Oh yes, this is very much not my cup of tea - whereas I was pleasantly surprised by how bearable Megadeth was earlier in the year, that's very much not the case here. Let's just say I'm sure they were making the sounds they wanted to make, there's a reasonable amount of skill involved in doing so and plenty of people were happy with the results. But it's REALLY not for me - it was a loooong 56 minutes, although I actually didn't mind the last track, "Planet Caravan" (and yes, I was amused to find out it's a Black Sabbath cover - they have to do someone else's material for me to tolerate it).

We're at a surprisingly high #3 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of a brief four week run with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Mariah Carey, Ace Of Base, M People and Morrissey with the highest new entry being The Charlatans (#8).

WIkipedia tells us this is their seventh album and the thing they think is most important to tell you is that this is "the first album by Pantera where the band's guitarist Darrell Abbott is credited as "Dimebag Darrell", having changed his nickname from "Diamond Darrell"" - these things matter, man! There's actually more content than I was expecting (140 milliPeppers) but most of it is a completely pointless breakdown of the thinking behind each song (spoiler alert - none of them are about rainbows or puppies). Far and away the most amusing section is on the album artwork - "the original album cover shows a drill going into someone's anus, but the record label rejected it, worrying it would harm sales and would be rejected by stores like Walmart and Target. The band then changed it to a drill put in the frontal lobe of a human skull". Because that's just so much nicer for the kids.

Critically, the album was pretty well received getting 10/10 from the Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal (required reading for everyone, I'm sure) and is still well regarded, with Rolling Stone declaring it #39 on their list "The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time" in '17. Commercially, it exceeded all expectations, debuting at #1 in the US ("arguably the most extreme album ever to do so") selling over 1.5 million copies. It also got to #1 in Australia but, strangely, only got to #3 in Finland - it feels right up their street.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD version for three quid, but a vinyl copy is going to set you back somewhere between £25 and £250, with no obvious reason for the price differences. You are welcome to spend however much you want on it but I, no doubt to your complete surprise, will not be doing so.

03/04/94 - I still can't forgive them for this

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