COLUMN: Pantera and hockey, a perfect combination
Pointing out that they should play Pantera at hockey games, I feel like this should be the first in a series of columns to be followed by other obvious truths like “Why Butter is a good condiment.”
I chose to broach this subject today because I believe that due to a number of qualities possessed by Pantera’s music, it is uniquely well-suited for broadcasting at a high decibel level to large numbers of people, such as might be found at sporting events.
It’s too bad that the guys who run the PA systems at USU’s various sporting venues seem to be in the dark as to the existence of Pantera’s music, because if any band were ever well-suited to being played in a stadium it’s them. I don’t want them to start playing Pantera in the Spectrum or Romney though, because old people might die or little kids might start crying if they heard how pissed off singer Phil Anselmo is on “Primal Concrete Sledge.”
No, I think Pantera’s aggressive brand of Power Metal would most fittingly be played at the Eccles Ice Arena during USU hockey games.
When the Ec is sold out, it’s an unfriendly crowd and the selection of music played over the PA should reflect that by attempting to whip the fans up into a frenzy of hostility. I know what song to play for that purpose: ******* Hostile by Pantera. It’s like they had ice hockey in mind when they wrote the song titles.
The PA guy at the hockey games does play some good tunes, like some of the hair metal selections, but a few of the choices are questionable. Green Day? How did this band get a hit album? Is there really that much allowance money being passed around? A lot of these songs are really begging for a mercy bullet.
Pantera’s singer Anselmo’s hobbies included mainlining drug cocktails into his eye, eating whatever pills were thrown onstage during the evening’s show and inciting riots. I use the past tense because his rampant drug use and the hectic pace of the band’s recording and touring broke them up a few years ago. It’s too bad, but at least they got some awfully heavy albums out of their system before going kaput, like “Vulgar Display of Power.”
If you’ve never listened to Pantera’s music, you can probably tell how cool it sounds just by the guys’ names: Rex, Vinny, Phil and “Dimebag.” With those names you are probably either starting a band or a Jiffy Lube. You may be familiar with “Dimebag” Darrell Abbot from when he was murdered onstage by a crazed fan at his new band’s show and got to be on television a lot. That would have been the only time you were likely to see the band because it achieved its massive world following without heavy play from MTV or radio stations, even purported “hard rock” stations.
Saying that they achieved success without being played on radio or MTV implies Pantera was wicked underground, but that’s not really the case. Pantera’s “Far Beyond Driven” album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts despite receiving no pre-release hype from industry rags and no notice from the critics.
Achieving a number one position on the Billboard charts based off purely word-of-mouth sales is surely a testament to this being the toughest heavy metal album ever created. The tone of Dimebag’s guitar is perfect on this CD; it sounds like he’s stuffing the instrument into a wood chipper. The songs are relentlessly harsh and atonal and I am convinced would have the effect of improving the Ec’s already significant home-ice advantage if they were played, say, every face-off.
Playing blatantly offensive music might even give our guys a competitive edge over visiting teams. Picture it: you’re a BYU hockey player. You have led an extremely sheltered, boring existence and, in fact, you are a boring person. Then one day you play a game in Logan. After listening to what they are playing over the PA, you become distracted when a piece of your brain falls onto the ice, allowing a crucial opening in your defense to open up, and just like that, USU is celebrating a goal.
I am not a music critic, just a sportswriter whose favorite Pantera song is “The Art of Shredding.”
-graham@cc.usu.edu