Pros: Punishing and very inventive metal from a master
Cons: Howling vocals, obscenties, and a fair dollop of monotony
The Bottom Line: For metalheads: buy this, no questions asked. For rockers: buy it if you don't mind yelling and cursing. Everybody else: save your dough
buffoonery's Full Review: New Found Power [Clean] [Edited] by Damageplan
This review is for two sets of people: 1) Pantera fans; and 2) everybody else.
For the Pantera fans (now that band has finally crashed and burned): Buy this album. Now. You’re going to love it. As Dimebag Darrell has said, this CD is about “brutality”. Lots of it. Sinister, aggressive, sludgy guitar riffs from Dimebag, backed by Vinnie Paul's bashing drums, thumping, driving bass lines courtesy of Bob Zilla, and growls and shouts from ex-Rob Halford guitarist and now-vocalist Patrick Lachman. From the metalhead/guitarhead perspective, this CD absolutely cooks.
Now, for the rest of us: Be careful. This is noisy and vulgar. An otherwise great metal album, it gets docked a star for the cursing and shouting, and objections from the hardcore be damned.
After two mediocre albums in the late 80’s, Pantera broke through with “Cowboys from Hell”, a smoking, very heavy, Southern-tinged metalhead CD that shot the band to popularity. “Vulgar Display of Power” followed, one of the most influential metal CD’s of the 90’s, and the band was an owner of the metal scene for the rest of the decade. Led by guitarist Dimebag Darrell, by acclamation of the two or three best metal guitarists in the country (in company with Zakk Wylde and either Kirk Hammett or—my choice—John Petrucci), the band dominated the charts.
But the band’s production stopped in 2000 with “Reinventing the Steel”. Lead singer—or shouter, I should say—Phil Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown went off on their side project Down and Anselmo fired off CD’s with Superjoint, while Vinnie and Dimebag were left, well, holding the bag.
Now, after widely publicized charges, counter-charges, festering recriminations and the like, we have Damageplan and “New Found Power”. This is heavy, angry, overwhelming music. It’s not-quite-but-almost death metal, a genre I loathe for its shouting vocals, vulgarity, and Satanic flirtations. Damageplan offers a lot of that up. You’re going to have to tune that out. This would be a MUCH better album if Patrick Lachman just played it straight and sang, as he does on stretches of tunes like the single “Save Me” and parts of “Blink of an Eye”. It’s songs like these that are the best on the CD, hook-laden riffs with a power rhythm section; they are terrific heavy metal.
(FYI, Dimebag and Lachman had been friends for a couple of years. Indeed, Dimebag liked Lachman’s guitar work on Rob Halford’s “Resurrection” CD so much that he has the title tattooed on his leg. One has to admire that sort of enthusiasm, in a twisted sort of way.)
My other objection to the CD is the vulgarity. I don’t need to hear a song in which the singer constantly screams “F*ck you” at me, or refers to “MF’s” or what not. I recently dinged pop-slut Liz Phair for that, and I’ll be consistent with these guys.
Some of you may say, “Hey, buff, swearing and screaming is what metal’s all about, you gotta understand that”, and you know what, I couldn’t care less. It may be good vomit, but it’s still vomit, OK? So the screams and the cursing cost these guys a star.
But, after repeated listenings (albeit skipping “F*ck You”), the docking is only one star. Why? Dimebag’s guitar work on this CD is really something to hear. This is extremely inventive work, filled with a surprising amount of dynamics, raucous through and through and seldom boring--if you like minor pentatonics, that is. As Dimebag said, this is music that “can rip your face off when called for.” The songs are—and this may be more heresy—almost catchy at times. I like this album the more I listen to it, and my readers know that I am not generous with my praise.
The most accessible song on the CD is the single “Save Me”, on which Lachman just sings for a change and the tune sounds like generic hard rock for the most part. But, naturally, it’s not that simple. First, the guitar are de-tuned one and a half steps AND it’s in dropped-D tuning, which means that the E-string is de-tuned two and a half steps. How the hell does Dimebag keep his guitar in tune? Those strings have to be flopping all over God’s half-acre. This straight-forward rocker is also punctuated by some interesting percussive effects in the solo, with the assistance of a Digi-Tech Whammy Pedal.
“Blink of an Eye” is another interesting tune that got started when Dimebag was playing around with the ring modulator effect on his Korg AX100G signal processor when he heard some stuff that “sounded like tubular bells or some sh*t, and I knew I had to use it”. The song’s chorus is backed with some understated soloing backed with some nice whammy bar work.
The rest of the album is much of the same. Unless you’re a genre fan or a guitarhead like me, this is going to get monotonous. Girlie-groupies need not apply. The fans will dig it, though. “Blunt Force Trauma” has a riff that reminds me a bit of AC/DC—anathema to Pantera fans, perhaps, but AC/DC nonetheless—until it turns into a short, fun, party solo. “Wake Up”, the opening tune, begins with a quiet, threatening line, then explodes with Lachman’s screams and a solo that seems to me is pulled right out of Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle” from the 1976 “Rocks” album. “Breathing New Life” is unadulterated power rock—hell, the whole CD is, I guess. I wish I knew what the song was about, though, because Lachman’s vocals are almost incoherent.
Another good, straight tune is “Moment of Truth”. It’s formed on a Tommy Iommi-like slide that sounds right out of early Sabbath. Lachman, again, actually sings, with some overdubbing work that creates harmony that this CD otherwise almost entirely lacks. The closer, “Soul Bleed” is in the same vein. It’s the song that is closest to an 80’s power ballad, with acoustic guitar and—get this, some keyboards—keyboards!—in the background, leading me to wonder whether gremlins got into the studio and put this tune on the CD while Dimebag was sedated or hungover or something.
I’ve written a lot about Dimebag’s guitar work, but I shouldn’t shun the rhythm section. Vinnie’s drum work, thankfully, rises far above the usual thumping, “hit the double-kick drums as hard as I can” monotony that fills heavy metal. He actually has a sense of timing. Bassist Bob Zilla’s work is competent, although sometimes he’s so far back in the mix that it’s tough to hear what he’s doing.
But the star of the CD is clearly Dimebag. This CD will do nothing to damage his reputation. If you like riffs, triplets, screeches, harmonics, explosions, chainsaws, power drills, almost any noise you can coax out of a guitar south of Steve Vai, here it is. Enjoy.
Postscript for guitarheads: How does Dimebag get his sound? He’s using signature Washburn Dime3 and Dime Stealth guitars with Seymour Duncan pickups played through Randall—Randall!—Warhead and Titan heads and a 1x12 Randall Isolation Cab. (Maybe this guy never heard of Marshall 4x12’s?) His effects include a Dunlop Dime Distortion, MXR Flanger/Doubler, Digitech Whammy, and a Dunlop Hendrix Octave Fuzz. And, in fact, Washburn has recently released a Southern Cross Dimebag Darrell signature Brazilian mahogany guitar that packs a $3,599 list price. Have fun with that monster, if you can afford it.
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