I love Pantera.

Right now I'm having a real fucking fetisch for Pantera and bands that to me are reminiscent to them - Machine Head, Exhorder and some new bands I found such as Infernoise, Lowdown and Throwdown.

None of these beats Pantera of course, though I reaaaally like Exhorder and their "Slaughter In The Vatican" album. Pantera seems to be one of those bands that has some of the most loyal fans in the world, while on the other hand, they also have the most loyal haters as well. Personally I've always thought that Pantera was awesome. Not the best band in the world, but they sure was one of the highlights during the 90's and the rape of grunge that followed. Not to forget is also that Pantera "fought" for metal in the 90's by playing it and keeping it alive, so it could be popular in the 21st century again. Then we got all of these real shitty metalcore bands (I only like very few of them) but that doesn't really matter.

Many of their fans say that "The Great Southern Trendkill" is their fave album. I personally have never really gotten into it. I started off with their "debut", "Cowboys From Hell", which got me for it's cool cover when I saw it in the record store many years ago. In time however, I've grown to prefer "Vulgar Display Of Power" and lately even the quite disliked "Reinventing The Steel". Me and a buddy of mine did this stage rigging about 7-8 months ago at a place in my town. The guys who worked in the firm that we helped rigged played some Rage Against The Machine (whose first album is known for this ...) to check the sound. Later they also checked the sound by playing the very "Reinventing The Steel" album. It was first then, about 4-5 years after I heard the album for the first time, that I realised how fucking heavy and ass-kicking it really is. Since then it's my fave Pantera album along with "V.D.O.P.".

So now ... I live in a collective and have two smaller rooms, making it a bedroom and a living room. It has its disadvantages by being pretty small (although I have room for my stuff and so), but it also has its advantages. For instance, I live in one of the corners of the house on the top floor, separated from all the others rooms. Since I live in the corner, I only have "neighbors" behind two of the walls. Behind one there is a to-become bathroom and behind the other there is a kitchen and a stairway down. There are also no one living beneath me, so that means that I can crank my music very loudly without disturbing my neighbors. THAT is fucking nice! And right now, I'm about to crank some fucking metal, at 0:25 AM. Crank on, metalheads!!