Vulgar Display of Power

Awful, I did give it my best go though!!

Sorry, y’all. I just don’t know how anyone takes this music (or at least these vocals) seriously.

1.5/5

I had a really hard time getting through today's album. Not because I dislike heavy metal, because it is one of my favourite genres of music. I just have a really hard time seeing the appeal of thrash metal in particular. This may be an unpopular opinion, but most of the thrash "greats" (Megadeth, Anthrax, Sodom, Pantera, Slayer) I just really don't like. I think it's because they distort their music so bad, and just wail on their instruments. None of it is really founded in musical theory, it just ends up being convoluted noise. And Phil Anselmo's incessant shouting doesn't help anything. The only thrash artists I like are Metallica (they made 2 of the best thrash albums ever, then changed their sound), and Sepultura.

This was such a boring album, I just kept losing interest in the music and found myself drifting off a lot. This led to me having to restart songs quite a few times to really give my honest opinion on them. I think I lost interest so much because there was no flow to the music. It was just instrument abuse and shouting.

I really hate thrash metal, and I'm glad that album is done.

Favourite songs: This Love, Fucking Hostile, Walk

Least favourite songs:... Most of the album.... One song ran into another in a drone of noise and distortion, so I couldn't tell you which song I hated most. Just.... All of it..... I suppose.

2/5 (mostly because of This Love and Walk)

I hvert fald i top 5 over bedste åbningsnummer på en metalplade!
Fyldt med bangers og kun en enkelt filler eller to.

5 stars. I know this album like the back of my hand. This was the album that got me in to HARD music. I wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music as a kid (I was in a cult), so my cousin and I would go to the basement and huddle around his little tape player with the volume on one and our fingers hovering over the stop button in case his mom opened the basement door.

This was the perfect metal album. Cowboys from Hell still had tinges of their hair metal past, but by the time Vulgar dropped all traces of glam were erased and Phil’s growls, grunts and screams are pure aggression.

Dark dark dark. This is probably going to be the heaviest rock that we get on the 1001 albums list. Vinnie Paul shows here why he was considered among the best metal drummers to ever play. Clean on the fast parts. Massive on the slow parts. This brings a heat and rage that is not matched by any other genre. Unlike the storytelling you get with Iron Maiden or the confused existential soul-searching of Metallica, Pantera has an incessant raging emotional fire. Sonically crushing, creative, and astonishingly tight, this gives birth to some of the best metal to come after it: Gojira, Avenged Sevenfold, Lamb of God and Trivium among them. This album seems to have brought this sort of dark introspective hardcore more into the mainstream. Underground black and death metal existed at the time but it certainly wasn't as accessible as this or the early thrash of Metallica and Anthrax, etc.

It's cool, though. A lot of newer genres rear their ugly heads: djent, prog, post-hardcore, melodic death metal, southern (think Mastodon or Baroness), and whatever it was that Alice in Chains was doing.

Criticisms: can be same sounding, guttural screaming is a good effect when used sparingly but here Anselmo WANTS YOU TO HEAR HIM (fair enough given the subject matter), sometimes the subtlety sounds forced. Overall a good record with tons of intensity that I wish Pantera could have built on instead of started luxuriating in for most of the ret of their career.

The glam metal thing didn't work out for them so they decided to get all hard instead? I mean I guess they succeeded, but at what cost? I'll tell you what cost: nu-metal.

Listening to this album made me realise how good this is. And strangely how much it sometimes sounds like Alice In Chains. But you'll always recognise a Pantera song. Vinnie's drums are unique, Dimebags riffs are masterful and Anselmo's vocals give it just that needed edge.
Was about to give it a 4* but re-listening to it again made me aware about how good this album was in its time. And that deserved that extra star, even if it drops off a bit near the end.

Glorious metal. Great example of the genre. I don't care for the scream vocals but I still enjoyed the album.

Soild 90s metal album, that should be in the list, clearly influenced a lot of the metal I listened to as a teenager, I am now a grown man so will not be adding this to my frequent rotation.

Very powerful, more so than it is vulgar! The foundation of much metal since; a clear influence on slipknot and a7x, and many other heavy & musically gifted bands.

Walk is a good song. Rise got me going this morning. As heavy an album as any on the list, this is a foundation of modern metal. As only a passing metalhead, I can't say I felt it move me to a 5 star but I found it enjoyable enough for a 4.

I am not a metal fan...it just seems to be all (angry) vibes to me with little redeeming quality. However...I felt there was just a little something on this album that peaked my interest enough to move it off the 1 line. 1.5/5

Meh, eipä oikein iskeny tää Panteran tykittely.

This is an unapologetically straightforward album with a name that lays plain, what you're getting into.

I remember hearing this album for the first time. It compelled me! I couldn't resist the urge to bang my head, clench my fists, furrow my brow, twist my face and gnash my teeth as each track pounded and growled along. I wasn't generally a rage filled person, but the visceral force of this album was infectious. It gave me a means for realizing emotions I had packed away and provided me with some harmless catharsis.

This album isn't really in my rotation list anymore, but it was great to hear it again. I can only point to a few albums that have taken me out of the blue like that, and I appreciate them each for what they helped me to learn about myself.

As far as the music itself goes, its quintessential hardcore metal. There is no glam. The big hair is traded for shaved heads and sweaty mops. The skin tight pants are traded for ripped denim. These bands look more like the roadies, than the main attraction.

That plainspoken affect of the artists carries through to the sound. The guitars grunts, growl, screech and wail, trading blues rock riffs for prog-esque atypical time signatures. The drums, instead of rolling along in the background with the occasional flourish or solo, are right at the forefront, pounding out the path and playing equal parts with all other instruments. The vocals are a gravel throated fist to the face, evoking all of the emotions folded up into each track. All of this is prepared with a simple production quality, much like how the perfect Texas Brisket only needs salt, pepper, and time (prove me wrong).

Classic album artwork!

As for the album itself, I can't make my mind up. The guitar riffs are ace, but feels dated now, maybe "you just had to be there, man!"?

En su momento los escuché. Eran demasiado Heavies para mi gusto. Sin embargo, pasado el tiempo veo que tenían más en común con los primeros Soundgarden o Alice in Chains de lo que recordaba. Interesantes. Estaba tan desconectado de ellos que ayer me enteré de la muerte del guitarrista tiroteado por un fan. Muy triste terminar así.