i'm pretty sure i never said political...
i said "lyrics with an awareness of society"

thrash is old metallica, slayer, megadeth, testament, exhorder, anthrax etc... VDOP had some thrash tendencies but had an intense groove that NO thrash album could match.. not by a mile.. a record like VDOP made RATM possible.. with all that heaviness and all that bounce...pantera paved the way for bands like rage, korn... etc...  they would have never been able to gain as wide of an audience had it not been for VDOP... forget about what kind of music they used to play... it's an album that we're questioning here... not the bands entire history

as far as drugs go.. don't sit there and tell me that tom morello or zack de la rocha never smoked dope....
as far as i can tell that would be the only "influence"

of course drugs were an influence on their music... most notably marijuana...but the only mention of drugs on the album is the "arrested for a joint?" line in fucking hostile...

sure.. later on, phil got dropped by heroin and prescription meds... but how can you say that VDOP was more influenced by drugs than.. well... any of the records above?

all i was saying was THAT album paved the way for bands like rage to be successful and that you can't judge an album by what you think you know about a band...

how can one like RATM's first record yet hate Vulgar Display Of Power?

there's just as many "head' bobbin"" beats... guitar heroics.. lyrics with an awareness of society and tons of crunch....

i mean... if you don't like it... fine
but hate is a strong word... if you're not a fan of hard metal, that's cool...
but most people lump that record into a certain category without having heard it... it's way too easy to listen to the songs everyone knows and miss some of the lesser known stuff that may actually surprise you....

cowboys from hell is iron maiden/judas priest with some van halen/hair metal sensibilities...

far beyond driven is a violent, ferocious, unrelenting attack of grinding guitars, and tripped out, spitting venomous vocals....

.. everything after that sorta followed that mold with an increasing amount of "redneck" peppered in..
it's difficult for one to get an idea of what VDOP sounds like from listening to these other albums..

the reason VDOP is sooo revered is because most pantera fans would agree it was their finest moment.. a truly original album.. and worthy of universal praise... from metal fans and non- metal fans alike..

but alot of non-metal fans hear "walk" or "mouth for war" and they think they have a pretty good idea of what the rest of the album sounds like.
they're wrong...




.. some have actually said that this record may have been truly responsible for nu metal.....

dookie

the shield

old school... well sorta...1995 kilgore fucking smuge from the album "blue collar solitude"
"see scott stapp... you CAN sound like eddie vedder and NOt be a complete puss bag!"