Cowboys From Hell: How an Arlington Bar Band Made a Thrash Record and Went Double Platinum

The Cowboys From Hell album is Pantera’s major-label debut, released by Atco Records on July 24, 1990. It was the Arlington band’s fifth album but the first made with an outside producer and a major label behind it, recorded at Pantego Sound with Terry Date. It sold slowly, did not chart until 1992, and is now certified double platinum. It is also where Pantera stopped sounding like a glam band.

How Did Pantera Get a Major-Label Deal?

By 1989 Pantera had four self-released albums and a long list of rejections. Vinnie Paul put the count at 23 in a 2010 Metal Hammer oral history; Blabbermouth’s 2010 report on the reissue says “twenty-eight times by every major label on the face of the earth.” The earlier records are covered in our piece on the glam years.

One executive kept watching. Derek Shulman liked the band, Vinnie said, but had his hands full. In 1989 Shulman’s A&R man Mark Ross was flying to North Carolina when Hurricane Hugo forced his plane down in Dallas. Ross called Shulman, and Shulman told him to go and see Pantera.

That night’s gig was a birthday party at a Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth. Anselmo remembered about 40 people and a dance floor slick with birthday cake. Four songs in, Ross walked out, and the band assumed it had lost him. He came back four songs later. Asked why he had left, Ross told Vinnie, by Vinnie’s account: “I went out to the car to call Derek and tell him we’re signing you guys.”

“By the end of the first song, my jaw was on the floor.”

That is Ross himself, writing in the liner notes of the 2010 reissue, as quoted by Blabbermouth. Within a month, Anselmo says, Darrell turned up at his apartment with the news of a seven-record deal. Then the band waited about six months to start recording, playing gigs and working odd jobs.

Where Was Cowboys From Hell Written?

Anselmo dates the writing from late 1988 all through 1989, “a four-way effort.” The first song finished was “The Art of Shredding,” which went on the first demo with “The Sleep” and the title track. Rex Brown told Metal Hammer that “The Art of Shredding,” “Heresy” and “Domination” were written “at this club called Joe’s Garage” in Fort Worth, and played there during soundchecks. Vinnie, in the same piece, says “Domination” was written “in the practice studio,” so the two memories differ.

Joe’s Garage matters to this site. The venues page calls it Rotting Corpse’s most regular room, and records that Walt Trachsler ran sound there through 1988 and 1989, the same stretch. Trachsler had been Darrell’s guitar tech before forming the band, as the history page tells it, and Rotting Corpse cut its second and third demos at Pantego with Vinnie Paul engineering, in 1987 and 1988.

In 2007 the Bazillion Points blog, posting Rotting Corpse’s 1986 demo, asked: “Who knows what influence these guys had on Pantera’s decision to play thrash?” Nobody can answer that honestly, and Pantera’s own accounts point elsewhere. Anselmo credits Slayer: he played Darrell “At Dawn They Sleep” in early 1988, and later befriended Kerry King. Pantera’s tour history lists King as a special guest at Joe’s Garage on May 19, 1989.

Is Cowboys From Hell Thrash or Groove Metal?

It is a thrash record with a Texas swing. “After we finished Power Metal, we looked at ourselves and said, ‘These fancy clothes and all this crazy hair ain’t playing music for us, we are,’” Vinnie Paul told Metal Hammer. He added that Darrell wrote the guitar riffs and he wrote the drum parts, and that in 1983 the brothers drove 120 miles to Tyler to see Metallica.

What set it apart was the groove. “A lot of thrash bands are sort of limited in what they can do,” Vinnie said. “Being from Texas, we were always fans of ZZ Top and bands that had really big grooves.” Wikipedia calls the album one of the first groove metal records and, citing AllMusic, credits it with “defining” the style.

The Overkill link is the one most often cited. The Years of Decay, released October 13, 1989, was produced by Overkill and Terry Date. Wikipedia reports that its guitar tone influenced Darrell and helped get Date the Pantera job. Guitarist Bobby Gustafson told Blabbermouth that Darrell called an earlier Overkill song, “Drunken Wisdom,” “a big influence on him.”

Recording at Pantego Sound With Terry Date

The first choice was Max Norman, whose records for Ozzy Osbourne and Malice the brothers loved. Vinnie said Norman flew to Houston, saw a gig and agreed. But the budget allowed $30,000 for a producer, and two days before the sessions Norman took a $50,000 offer to make another band’s record instead. Ross then suggested Terry Date, who had “just finished doing Soundgarden and Overkill.”

Date came to see the band in Muenster, Texas, and Anselmo remembers him saying, “This is way different than I originally thought.” Brown says they went into Pantego in February 1990 and spent two months recording; Anselmo told Blabbermouth the band cut it “in 1989,” so accounts vary. Anselmo told Metal Hammer he spent hours on one note in “Cemetery Gates” until Date suggested port wine, a trick of Chris Cornell’s.

Vinnie says “Primal Concrete Sledge” was the last song written, in the studio, off a drum pattern he hammered out. Wikipedia, citing the site Love It Loud, pairs it with “Clash With Reality” as the last two written, and neither is on the 1989 demo tape. Brown called it “the bridge to Vulgar Display of Power.” The Abbotts had grown up around this room: their father, Jerry Abbott, was an engineer there, and Brown remembers sneaking in to “sit way underneath the board” while blues players recorded.

The cover looks like a staged Western set, but it is a 1910 photograph of the Cosmopolitan Saloon in Telluride, Colorado, the picture at the top of this page, with the four members pasted in. Anselmo’s midair pose came from jumping off a bar stool, about ten takes’ worth, according to the album’s Wikipedia entry. Loudwire tells the same story of the photo.

How Long Did Cowboys From Hell Take to Go Platinum?

The album was the start of a long grind, not an instant hit. Pantera’s first national tour opened for Exodus and Suicidal Tendencies from August 1990. Brown counted about 300 dates on the album’s first touring cycle, to crowds of “500 to 1,000 kids a night.” The band’s tour history logs the run night by night, from San Francisco on August 18 through the East Coast in September.

After Rob Halford sat in with them at a club in Toronto, Pantera was invited to open for Judas Priest in Europe. In September 1991 they played the Monsters of Rock festival in Moscow with AC/DC and Metallica, released in part as the Alive and Hostile EP.

Sales followed the touring. The album first charted in 1992, peaking at No. 27 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart. Blabbermouth says it took “another seven years and over a million miles of touring” to go platinum. The RIAA database dates its most recent award, double platinum, to May 26, 2023. The 20th-anniversary reissue debuted at No. 117 on the Billboard 200 in 2010, selling about 4,200 copies, per Blabbermouth.

Which Cowboys From Hell Songs Should You Hear First?

Start with the title track. Brown says the “whooshing” intro was a loop Darrell played over until the riff arrived, a “little form of in-the-box blues scaling.” Then “Domination,” which Vinnie says is the first take, and “Primal Concrete Sledge,” two minutes and thirteen seconds that point straight at 1992.

“Psycho Holiday” was the album’s other 1990 single, alongside the title track. Brown and Anselmo told Metal Hammer the title’s story between them. After the first demo, Anselmo badly needed a trip home to New Orleans, and Brown says he wrote “Psycho Holiday” on the pad by the phone. Anselmo remembers that page, covered in flight times, and says it became an inside joke until Vinnie Paul pointed out it was a great song title.

“Cemetery Gates” is the seven-minute ballad, and Loudwire credits it with widening the band’s audience. Anselmo told Loudwire it was “a big compromise musically at the time.” Hear it anyway; the vocal range on it is real.

Then go back for the deep cuts. “The Sleep” and “The Art of Shredding” were on the first demo, and Brown says the band recorded “Heresy,” “Domination” and “Shredding” “all at one time.” Anselmo is hardest on “Shattered,” calling it “a carryover from the Power Metal days” with nuclear-war lyrics that had “been done before.” “Medicine Man” and “Message in Blood” were already on the eleven-song 1989 demo tape, reissued in 2010 as Cowboys From Hell: The Demos. Skip the 2010 bonus track “The Will to Survive” until you know the album.

Cowboys From Hell Track Listing

Twelve songs, all credited to Pantera, running 57:43 on the original Atco CD, per Wikipedia.

1. “Cowboys From Hell” (4:06)
2. “Primal Concrete Sledge” (2:13)
3. “Psycho Holiday” (5:19)
4. “Heresy” (4:47)
5. “Cemetery Gates” (7:02)
6. “Domination” (5:04)
7. “Shattered” (3:22)
8. “Clash With Reality” (5:16)
9. “Medicine Man” (5:15)
10. “Message in Blood” (5:10)
11. “The Sleep” (5:47)
12. “The Art of Shredding” (4:18)

Where to Hear It Live

Joe’s Garage is long gone, but the North Texas side of this story still plays live. Rotting Corpse plays the Haltom Theater in Haltom City on November 14, 2026, with Iron Jaw, on the Fort Worth side of the Metroplex. Before that come The Mix in San Antonio on October 24 and Kinda Tropical in Austin on October 26, and Spam’s Bar and Lounge in San Angelo follows on December 5. Every date is on the shows page, and the timeline covers the Pantego years.

As of October 2026, Pantera has no Texas dates announced. The next show is The Great NOLA Trendkill at Lakefront Arena in New Orleans on November 20 and 21, 2026. Consequence reports a bill with Down, Corrosion of Conformity, Black Label Society and Dallas’s Power Trip. Tickets are on Live Nation, and new dates post first at pantera.com.

Sources

1. Metal Hammer / Louder: The Story Behind Cowboys From Hell (Jon Wiederhorn)
2. Loudwire: Pantera Find Their Voice With ‘Cowboys From Hell’
3. Loudwire: Pantera’s ‘Cowboys From Hell’: 9 Facts Only Superfans Would Know
4. Blabbermouth: ‘Cowboys From Hell: The Demos’ and the 20th-anniversary editions
5. Blabbermouth: 20th-Anniversary Reissue Lands on Billboard Chart
6. Blabbermouth: Philip Anselmo: Pantera ‘Helped Change the Production of Heavy Metal Records’
7. Blabbermouth: Bobby Gustafson on “Drunken Wisdom” and Dimebag Darrell
8. Wikipedia: Cowboys from Hell
9. Wikipedia: The Years of Decay
10. Pantera.com: Tour Dates History
11. RIAA: Gold and Platinum search, Pantera
12. Dallas Observer: The metal scene remembers Abboud Greig, Joe’s Garage
13. Bazillion Points: Rotting Corpse, The Original Rotting Cowboys From Hell
14. Wikimedia Commons / Library of Congress: Gambling, Telluride, Colorado (1910)
15. Consequence: Pantera to Headline NOLA Festival
16. Live Nation: Pantera 2026 tour dates

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