If Pantera had their way their debut album would no doubt have been Cowboys From Hell. Their 1990 breakthrough classic first introduced the four-piece to the mainstream metal community and helped to usher in a new type of music as the hair metal scene of the 1980s slowly begun to die out. Yet Pantera themselves had been a part of this same genre, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dokken and Stryper during their early days, while also perming their hair and wearing tight leather for their album sleeves. The 1980s was, after all, a flamboyant and extravagant decade and public tastes leaned towards men in make-up and spandex. Even other emerging metal acts like Sepultura adopted a similar image to Pantera during their early days, but as the so-called hair metal genre became a victim of its own success, metal fans were ready for something new and exciting.
While Pantera‘s fourth effort, the appropriately-titled Power Metal, would live up to its potential, it still pointed the band in the right direction and marked their swan song as a hair metal group. Pantera had first come together in 1981 by a group of high school students who desperately wanted to emulate their heroes; Kiss, Van Halen and Iron Maiden. The initial line-up consisted of Terry Glaze and Darrell Abbott on guitar, his older brother Vince Abbott on drums, Tommy Bradford on bass and Donny Hart on vocals, yet within a year they had been reduced to a four-piece, with Glaze replacing Hart as the frontman and Bradford leaving the group and the bass spot being filled by Rex “Rocker” Brown. The Abbott brothers had been raised in a music-orientated household due to their father, Jerry, who had strong associations with the country scene. Sensing his sons’ potential, he helped to form an independent label called Magic Metal Records and produced the band’s first three albums – Magic Metal, Projects in the Jungle and I Am the Night – at a small studio in Pantego, Texas.
Yet following the release of the latter it became clear that Glaze had different ideas surrounding the future of the group than his three bandmates, who wanted to move further away from the hair metal scene and into darker and heavier territories. Glaze eventually left the group in the spring of 1986 and soon the Abbotts began auditioning for a new singer. Among the hopefuls was Matt L’Amour, who would instead go on to work with Diamond, and David Peacock, while both Hart and Glaze tried once again to join the band. Enter Philip Anselmo who, despite having only recently turned eighteen, had already performed in two local groups, Samhain and Razor White. After an evening at the Abbotts over a bottle of Tequila, Anselmo was offered to join the band and the final line-up of Pantera commenced work on their fourth album.
A year earlier, Darrell (who by this point was known professionally as Diamond Darrell) and Vince (or Vinnie Paul as he was credited on the albums) had made the acquaintance of Marc Ferrari, lead guitarist of Los Angeles-based hair metallers Keel, who had arrived in Texas to promote their second album, The Right to Rock. The brothers had given him tapes of their first two records and he immediately sensed the potential, despite the crude production and lack of direction. He soon became close friends with the band and often partied with them, while also attempting to bring them to the attention of the metal press, and eventually suggested the group to Gold Mountain Records, who had signed Keel in 1984. Yet creative differences between the band and label became an immediate issue, with the executives insisting that Pantera try to re-brand themselves as a group similar to Poison, Bon Jovi and the countless other hair metal bands that were popular at the time. Despite the deal falling apart, Ferrari agreed to help in any way he would and offered to produce their album, Power Metal.
The material that would be recorded during these sessions had already been written before Anselmo had joined Pantera and so Glaze’s influence could still be felt after his departure. Once again Jerry Abbott was on hand to help, working as the engineer alongside Vinnie, while Ferrari oversaw the production aspect, adding a more developed and professional sound compared to the band’s earlier releases. While the group had distanced themselves from their roots, they had yet to fully realise their potential and so the songwriting and performing was somewhat reminiscent of Judas Priest, while elements of Queensrÿche could also be felt in places. Another clear influence was W.A.S.P., particularly on the track Hard Ride, which opened with a guitar riff somewhat reminiscent of Wild Child, the opening number from W.A.S.P.‘s 1985 classic The Last Command. As a show of appreciation for all of Ferrari’s help, both inside the studio and as a friend, the band agreed to include one of his songs, Proud to be Loud, which he had written during the sessions for Keel‘s self-titled fourth album but had not been included on the final release.
Power Metal was released in 1988, the same year that produced Open Up and Say… Ahh! by Poison and New Jersey by Bon Jovi, but it would mark not only Pantera‘s last hair metal record but also their final album on an independent label. The following year they were finally “discovered” and signed to Atco Records, a division of the Atlantic Recording Corporation, and in 1990 their first true classic album, Cowboys From Hell, was released. As the band gained momentum and enjoyed both commercial and critical success, they tried to distance themselves from their hair metal beginnings, and even Power Metal is often disregarded as an inferior earlier offering.
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