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The Great Southern Trendkill

Pantera - The Great Southern Trendkill Audio CD

A fair review of the Pantera "The Great Southern Trendkill" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Pantera reviews here, or go back to the Pantera tabs.

Band: Pantera
Title: The Great Southern Trendkill
Rating:

Release Date: 2000-07-12
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Great Southern Trendkill 2: War Nerve 3: Drag the Waters 4: 10's 5: 13 Steps to Nowhere 6: Suicide Note, Pt. 1 7: Suicide Note, Pt. 2 8: Living Through Me (Hell's Wrath) 9: Floods 10: Underground in America 11: Sandblasted Skin (Reprise)

Underrated and amazing metal album from one of the best metal bands around!
However, "The Great Southern Trendkill" is undoubtedly a bludgeoning metal classic that should be in any Pantera fan's collection!

The music here is much heavier and abrasive than "Cowboys From Hell", and the lyrics are far more explicit, but this album definitely has its own selection of Pantera classics. "The Great Southern Trendkill" is not usually considered one of Pantera's best albums, what with "Cowboys From Hell" and "Vulgar Display of Power" being two of the most successful, and two of the most common fan-favorites. You get such screeching, enraged and thundering metal moshers such as "The Great Southern Trendkill" and "War Nerve". Then Pantera shows you that they've got some of the catchiest extreme-metal riffs around with such songs as "Drag The Waters" and "13 Steps To Nowhere". But wait, there's more! The band shows their skill at crafting softer songs, with "Suicide Note Part 1", which is filled with nice keyboards, and the beautiful guitar epic "Floods". Honestly, "Floods" is such a classic song and one of the most amazing outros in the history of modern music, it's a work of art.

So while most of the riffs aren't as complex as those on "Cowboys From Hell" and the heaviness has been turned up a bit since "Far Beyond Driven", Pantera has still made a metal classic with "The Great Southern Trendkill". A friendly warning, this is NOT for the fainthearted! But this is highly recommended for all extreme-metal fans. Thanks for the time, and peace.

perfect
GREAT SELLER!. thank you so much for your speedy delivery and well described item.

My favorite
So basically i've listened to every Pantera album millions of times . . . . . and for some reason iam on amazon buying this cd again for the 50th time . . . . . . . . probally because its the best pantera album thats all i gotta say.

this is one f#cking under rated album
this is one heavy album w/ not a single skip able track , the stand out songs are 10s drag threw the waters and one of panteras best songs floods , it's the best song on the cd and phil vocals are perfect but my favorite part of this song is at the end where dime plays this watered down guitar riff its a perfect way to end the song. how this album has only 4/5 star rated is F$CKED UP , when it comes to best pantera albums people alway say cowboys from hell or vulgar display of power and far beyond driven , now those are awesome cds but this album doesnt get merely the cred it should get. anyway if you don't already own this cd then get it , I rate it a 10/10.

Of Scout Brawls and Trendkills
Ok, that's utterly preposterous. Back in the spring of 1992, I roamed the streets of the rough and tumble Fan District of Richmond, Virginia in a Vulgar Display of Power "Stronger Than All" t-shirt looking to fight anyone I could find. I've been in two fights in my life, both in 8th grade, a bizarrely combative year. First, I tangled with lanky Raymond Byrd who inexplicably stuffed a discarded cigarette butt in my mouth during a walk home from the bus stop, touching off an unlikely street brawl that culminated in Raymond running home to his mother and his trombone case lying discarded in the gutter. Then, a few months later during a two-week Boy Scout hike through the New Mexico wilderness, in a Lord of the Flies-like moment, I engaged in a bout of fisticuffs with a fellow scout who went by the terrifying sobriquet of Pee-Wee.

So, I'm really not a fighter, don't know why people resort to it. For me, listening to Pantera at high volumes is usually enough to sooth the savage beast within. At a time when the creative peaks of Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer were coming to an end, Pantera offered a new, angrier thrash sound for those of us who needed their metal ever heavier. Cowboys From Hell was a promising effort suggesting new metal giants had arrived, and Vulgar Display of Power subsequently delivered on that promise inspiring mayhem in moshpits across the country. I remember attempting to find a spot in the middle of the Roseland Ballroom in NYC before a concert during the Vulgar Display tour to avoid getting caught in a mosh, only to find that the entire ballroom became a violent moshpit with the first note. Ten seconds into the opener, `Mouth For War', I had traveled 100 feet involuntarily and lost my favorite hooded sweatshirt. Somehow Far Beyond Driven managed to be even heavier than Vulgar Display and by 1994 Pantera had solidified their status as the heaviest mainstream metal band in the world.

The summer of 1996 brought the release of the disturbingly heavy The Great Southern Trendkill, an album that commenced with Phil Anselmo emitting the sort of guttural bellow previously found only in the more underground world of death metal. At the time, the unthinkable happened and I suddenly began to regard Pantera as too difficult and pointlessly noisy. I gave up on The Great Southern Trendkill after just a few complicated listens. I listened to At the Gates and Entombed - I wasn't afraid of death metal, I just couldn't accept Pantera as death metal poseurs. The transition seemed forced to me (ironic since Pantera had ascended to fame by quietly transitioning from glam to thrash metal nearly a decade earlier). Over time, the The Great Southern Trendkill went missing from my music collection, and I barely noticed.

Years passed. I got into In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and Opeth so you know I still enjoyed, in fact `needed', the heavy stuff. Then, a few years ago, I was clicking around on Amazon and came across The Great Southern Trendkill. The cool cover art suddenly made me hungry to re-evaluate it and when I saw that it could be had for cheap, I took the plunge and bought it. Listening to it for the first time in years, I was blown away by the heaviness. What seemed forced nearly a decade earlier, suddenly struck me as genuine. Darrell's dizzying array of riffs were as strong as on any Pantera album, Phil seemed angrier than ever, sometimes troublingly so. The opening title track is a riveting pledge to avoid following the nu-metal trend emerging at the time Trendkill was released. It is almost never a good idea to write a song about media coverage (if you need an example, I submit "Get in the Ring" by Gn'R for your consideration), yet "War Nerve" works, and works well at that. "Drag the Waters" is sinister and brutal, like being dredged through a gator-filled bayou hanging on by your fingernails from the back of a pilot boat. And the intensity continues at a consistently high level all the way through to the end, marked by the cheery "(Reprise) Sandblasted Skin".

In summary, The Great Southern Trendkill is Pantera at their darkest and heaviest, a stunning combination, and an album that seems only to get better with time. Based on its Amazon reviews, Trendkill seems to receive less respect from fans than any other prime-era Pantera release, but if you haven't listened to it in a few years, it might be time to give it another chance. We all know Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven are classic metal albums, but ignore The Great Southern Trendkill at your own peril. Since I `rediscovered' it, Trendkill has been my favorite Pantera album. And I haven't been in any more fights since I purchased it either.

You can see a complete list of all Pantera discography, or go back to the Pantera tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.