| Reinventing the Steel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Pantera | ||||
| Released | March 14, 2000 | |||
| Recorded | 1999–2000 | |||
| Genre | Groove metal | |||
| Length | 43:50 | |||
| Label | EastWest | |||
| Producer | Dimebag Darrell, Vinnie Paul, Sterling Winfield | |||
| Pantera chronology | ||||
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Reinventing the Steel is the ninth and final studio album by heavy metal band Pantera. It was released through EastWest Records, on March 14, 2000.
Contents |
In Australia a two-disc Tour Edition of the album was released. The first disc consists of the album proper, while the second is an unofficial hits compilation. This is now a collector's item. An edited version of the song "Death Rattle" was used on an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants titled "Pre-Hibernation Week." This track was also featured on SpongeBob SquarePants: Original Theme Highlights released August 14, 2001.
Reinventing the Steel contains lyrics mostly about the band itself, as on "We'll Grind that Axe for a Long Time" (where the band members tell about how they have kept it "true" throughout the years, while many of their peers "sucked up for the fame") and "I'll Cast a Shadow" (about Pantera's influence on the genre). There are also songs about their fans, like "Goddamn Electric" and "You've Got to Belong To It." "Goddamn Electric" mentions Black Sabbath, and Slayer, two of the band's main influences. The band members dedicated Reinventing the Steel to their fans, whom they viewed as their brothers and sisters.
The cover art is a snapshot taken from the video of Revolution Is My Name, the first single of the album.
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | link |
| Rolling Stone | link |
| Metal Storm | |
| Metal Observer | |
| Sputnikmusic | link |
It reached #4 on the Billboard Top 200 charts, #8 on the Top Canadian Albums chart, and #5 on the Top Internet Albums chart. The album's fifth track, "Revolution Is My Name", reached #28 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks. The album was certified gold by the RIAA on May 2, 2000,[1] however the album has yet to reach platinum status, making it Pantera's only major label studio album not to reach sales of 1,000,000.
Rolling Stone (5/25/00, p. 73) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "Metal-revivalist....relying on the genre's primal elements of rage and analog noise...chopped up with squealing dissonance....brutal enough to please underground purists and familiar enough for weekend headbangers."
Entertainment Weekly (3/24/00, p. 102) - "...resumes their scorched-earth policy with vigor....dropping aural anvils [along] with a dash of inventiveness..." - Rating: B+
Q magazine (6/00, p. 112) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Pantera's attempt to upgrade [ Judas Priest's] British Steel-era pure metal spirit....unequivocal heavy metalness."
Alternative Press (7/00, pp. 108–9) - 5 out of 5 - "An undiluted, unvarnished slab of riffs paying distinct homage to Judas Priest's British Steel, and not just in a titular sense, but in basic song construction."
CMJ (4/3/00, p. 32) - "Crammed with everything they've used to revolutionize metal....so old-school it could have been easily made in between the quartet's back-to-back classics."
NME (4/15/00, p. 34) - 6 out of 10 - "An unfashionably old-school metal album....it's Pantera's bid to herald the rebirth of bullet-belt, cut-off denim metal....It's a solid album, oozing drunk-as-hell metal spirit."
All songs written and composed by Pantera.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Hellbound" | 2:41 |
| 2. | "Goddamn Electric" | 4:58 |
| 3. | "Yesterday Don't Mean Shit" | 4:19 |
| 4. | "You've Got to Belong to It" | 4:13 |
| 5. | "Revolution Is My Name" | 5:19 |
| 6. | "Death Rattle" | 3:17 |
| 7. | "We'll Grind That Axe for a Long Time" | 3:44 |
| 8. | "Uplift" | 3:45 |
| 9. | "It Makes Them Disappear" | 6:22 |
| 10. | "I'll Cast a Shadow" | 5:22 |
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Total length:
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43:50 | |
| Japanese Bonus Tracks | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 11. | "Hole in the Sky" (Black Sabbath cover) | 4:17 | |||||||
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