I am continuing my string of "bugaloo" songs. This discussion was started in the "Monster Hunter Nation, Hunters Unite", back in November of 2019? it is a Facebook group with enthusiast of the ILOH "International Lord of Hate" A.K.A Larry Correia. We were talking about what song would we use if we looked out of our window or glanced at our security camera and saw this.....
One
of the alphabet bois lining up to take down your house...What would be
your "Valhalla" song and you would set it up to play as you load up
magazines set up the Tannerite Rover, turn on the water irrigation system and fill it with gasoline instead of water and prepare yourself.
I figured it would scar the alphabet boys if they come busting in and hearing a song about people having a good time and standing up for themselves and having the best music from the best decade and playing it Loud will scar the Alphabet Boi's as they force the stack through the door, because they will be exposed to good music for the first time unlike the crap they listen to now sipping their soi latte's and comparing notes on the latest soyburger recipes and who wears the best manbuns in the team.
This song was suggested by "V2", I have heard of Pantera but know little about them....Until now.
Cowboys from Hell is the fifth studio album by American heavy metal band Pantera, released on July 24, 1990 by Atco Records. It marked the band's major label debut and their first collaboration with producer Terry Date. It is considered one of the first ever groove metal albums
Writing sessions for Cowboys from Hell took place throughout 1988 and 1989. After being turned down "28 times by every major label on the face of the Earth", Atco Records representative Mark Ross was asked by his boss, Derek Shulman (who was interested in signing Pantera), to see the band perform after Hurricane Hugo stranded him in Texas. Ross was so impressed by the band's performance that he called his boss that night, suggesting that Pantera be signed to the label.
Ross on the performance:
"By the end of the first song, my jaw was on the floor. The sonic power of it all — the attitude and the musicianship — blew me away. Basically, you had to be an idiot to not think they're amazing. I mean, how could you see these guys and not think, 'Holy shit!'?"
Atco Records accepted but the band had to wait a six month period before they commenced recording at Pantego Sound Studio in Pantego, Texas. Accounts vary as to how long the recording sessions of Cowboys from Hell lasted; bassist Rex Brown stated in a 2010 interview with Metal Hammer that the recording sessions took place from February to April 1990, however vocalist Phil Anselmo has also claimed that the album was recorded in 1989. Pantera's initial choice as the producer for Cowboys from Hell was Max Norman based on his work with Ozzy Osbourne. Norman, who flew to Houston to watch the band perform, initially agreed to work on the album, but right before the recording sessions started, he was offered to produce Lynch Mob's debut album Wicked Sensation instead Pantera then proposed Terry Date to produce the album on the strength of his work with Soundgarden, Metal Church and Overkill, the latter of whose latest album at the time The Years of Decay had influenced Diamond Darrell's guitar tone, as well as the band's transition away from glam/traditional heavy metal to thrash/groove metal.
Pantera adopted a new sound and attitude, and the writing of what would become Cowboys from Hell saw the band exploring darker subject matters, while the guitar would be notably heavier, despite occasionally reverting to the hair metal formula. The band recorded a self-produced demo album in 1989 which featured 11 tracks, 10 of which would make the album cut. The last two tracks to be written were "Clash with Reality" and "Primal Concrete Sledge", while a song entitled "The Will to Survive" would be discarded early in the recording sessions.
The band were feeling confident about their material and themselves, finally feeling that they were making the kind of album they believed in. One key track to emerge during the writing was "Cemetery Gates", a seven-minute power ballad that would be the first song to show both their diversity and Anselmo's vocal range. Although they had already recorded four albums prior to Cowboys from Hell, Pantera felt that this was their true debut, working with a professional producer and a major label for the first time and creating music that was not simply stealing from other similar bands in an attempt to attract attention.
Pantera's vocalist Phil Anselmo recalled on an episode of That Metal Show that during a 1989 house party in Fort Worth, Texas, guitarist Dimebag Darrell arrived late and ran towards Anselmo and said he had a new riff to show him. The two of them went into Abbott's car where he played the intro to Anselmo, who said afterward to Abbott, "Yes, this must be an anthem."
Drummer Vinnie Paul described the concept:
Cowboys is where everybody came into their own, along with the full-blown Pantera sound", "That was actually the first song we wrote for the record. Basically it was about us coming out of Texas and being out of place. People don't think of Texas as being a hot spot for heavy metal, they think of New York or L.A. or something like that, so it just seemed like an obvious concept for us.
Bassist Rex Brown remembered the designing of the introduction:
The crazy noise at the beginning was just a Dime thing, that's what he was hearing in his head so he made a loop of that to play over. I just remember it was fucking very repetitious and very fucking annoying for a long while. And that "Cowboys From Hell" intro is a little form of in-the-box scaling. We were always down the street watching all these great blues guys come through because Vinnie and Darrell's dad [Jerry Abbott] was an engineer at Pantego studio. We'd sneak down there and sit way underneath the board listening to all this great stuff. And I think that's where Dime got the idea for that intro to "Cowboys". He started it as a kind of modal exercise because he would practice it forwards and backwards.
The song was recorded for the band's 1989 demo album, Cowboys from Hell: The Demos. After the band got signed to Atco Records, the band rerecorded the song and put it on the major label debut album Cowboys from Hell.
The music videos for this song and for "Psycho Holiday" were recorded in a Dallas club that the band frequented called "The Basement" and were directed by Paul Rachman. The video simply shows the band playing the song live to an audience
Glad you enjoyed it! Def a motivator!!
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