The Great Southern Trendkill

The Great Southern Trendkill is a work on which PANTERA sharpened the destructive power of their groove further, pushing noise, speed and a sinking weight into a single sound image. Dimebag Darrell’s riffs surge hard, and Vinnie Paul’s drums shake the songs enormously. Even within the band’s catalog, it is an especially fierce and raw record. On “The Great Southern Trendkill,” “Drag the Waters” and “Floods,” behind the roughness is emotion that does not hide tension and exhaustion. In particular, the dramatic development of “Floods” fully shows the expressiveness of Dimebag Darrell’s guitar. Songs like “War Nerve” and “13 Steps to Nowhere” breathe the band’s full playing too. By turning even that instability into sound, it holds an unparalleled tension. It is a full record on which the band’s madness and artistry intersected.