Main Street Music

Reviews:

Thrashing maniacs Sepultura split with founding frontman Max Cavalera in 1996 at the height of their powers, and extreme music was not only stripped of one great band, but subsequently afflicted with a pair of mediocre ones-Max's nu metal Soulfly and the reconfigured Seps. Multi-platinum thrashers Pantera, on the other hand, were clearly unraveling long before last year's unofficial "official" breakup: the band's final pair of studio LPs, 1996's The Great Southern Trendkill and 2000's Reinventing the Steel, illustrated the deepening creative schism between frontman Phil Anselmo and brothers Dimebag Darrell (guitar) and Vinnie Paul (drums). After years of pining for more extreme underground metal sounds, Anselmo finally left to lead the incoherent ramblings of sludge punk project Superjoint Ritual.

That brings us to Damageplan, the new outfit assembled by Darrell and Vinnie, whose debut album applies a dose of the metallic formula that propelled Pantera, but with less favorable results. New vocalist and former Rob Halford guitarist Patrick Lachman may be a physically imposing thug, but he lacks the charisma with which Anselmo practically carried Pantera through their final years. On New Found Power's deceptively decent first single "Breathing New Life" Lachman minces his throat performing an unconvincing Anselmo impersonation: see, like Prince Herbert in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, all he really wants to do is sing! Unfortunately, he only uses his pretty voice to make songs such as "Pride," "Crawl" and "Save Me" sound like Godsmack, before rendering closer "Soul Bleed" a Staind monster ballad knockoff. Every bad boy has his sensitive side. He should keep it to himself.