The Great Southern Trendkill is Pantera’s eighth studio album, released on May 7, 1996, and it debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. Dimebag Darrell, Rex Brown and Vinnie Paul tracked the music at Chasin’ Jason Studios in Dalworthington Gardens, the small city inside Arlington, Texas. Phil Anselmo recorded his vocals in New Orleans. It is often called the heaviest record Pantera made.
The Short Version
- Released May 7, 1996, on EastWest/Elektra. Eleven songs, 53:05.
- Recorded October 1995 to February 1996: music at Chasin’ Jason Studios, Dalworthington Gardens, Texas; vocals at Nothing Studios, New Orleans.
- Produced by Terry Date and Vinnie Paul, with Pantera as co-producer. Ulrich Wild is credited for recording.
- No. 4 in the US, No. 2 in Australia, No. 17 in the UK. RIAA gold on June 25, 1996, and later platinum.
- Lead single: “Drag the Waters,” followed by promo singles “Suicide Note Pt. I” and “Floods.” “Suicide Note Pt. I” drew a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance.
How Did The Great Southern Trendkill Do?
It sold fast without a hit to carry it. Wikipedia puts the first-week US sales at 149,000 copies, enough for No. 4 on the Billboard 200. Abroad it reached No. 2 in Australia and No. 17 in the UK.
The RIAA certified it gold on June 25, 1996, less than two months after release, according to Loudwire. It later went platinum in the US, and also earned platinum in Japan and silver in the UK.
It followed Far Beyond Driven, which had debuted at No. 1 two years earlier. Play the two back to back and the 1996 record sounds less like a sequel than a push further out. In 2019, Kerrang! ranked it Pantera’s best album.
Where Was The Great Southern Trendkill Recorded?
The music was cut in Texas, in a studio Dimebag built in his backyard barn. Wikipedia places Chasin’ Jason Studios in Dalworthington Gardens, a Tarrant County city of 2,293 people. Its northern border adjoins Pantego, and both towns are completely surrounded by Arlington. Some accounts simply say Dallas or Arlington.
Loudwire’s Jon Wiederhorn describes Chasin’ Jason as a makeshift room rather than a professional studio. Brown recalled that Dimebag “put up three walls and made a studio inside of it.” Much of the record was played “Straight off the cuff, man,” Brown said, and his bass part on “Floods” was “straight on the floor.” The band never went back to re-record it.
Terry Date and Vinnie Paul produced it, with Pantera credited as co-producer and Ulrich Wild credited for recording. It was Date’s last Pantera album after working with them since Cowboys From Hell in 1990. In a 2014 Revolt interview reposted on pantera.com, Date said Dimebag and Vinnie Paul worked out the solos together on this record, as they had on Far Beyond Driven. Their communication, he said, was “so refined.”
The geography matters to this site. Pantego Sound, the Abbott family’s earlier studio, sat in the next small town north, and it is where Rotting Corpse cut its first three demos from 1986 to 1988. Jerry Abbott engineered the first, and Vinnie Paul engineered the 1987 and 1988 sessions, as the band history records.
Pantego Sound Studio Closed 1996
Jerry Abbott’s studio, where Pantera made Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display of Power, closed in 1996, the year this album came out. By then the band was recording at Dimebag’s own studio in the next town south. Our Pantego Sound history tells the rest.
The band’s archive has no photo of the working studio, so this card shows Rotting Corpse’s demo credits sheet, which lists its Pantego sessions. Rotting Corpse archive
Why Are There Two Cities on the Credits?
Because Phil Anselmo sang his parts in Louisiana. He recorded the vocals at Nothing Studios, the New Orleans studio Trent Reznor owned at the time, while the band tracked in Texas. In Revolver’s 25th-anniversary interview, transcribed by Blabbermouth on May 7, 2021, he described the setup plainly.
“It was the first record I did away from the band.”
“And Terry Date would come, fly out to work with me,” Anselmo said. He added, “I think I felt pretty confident that the songs were devastating enough.” Of the title track, he said, “It was like an announcement.” What it announced, in his words: “We have not left our heavy metal roots behind.”
The split meant Dimebag built his leads without the finished vocals in hand, Loudwire notes. He still sounded pleased. “It’s almost like a ‘best of,’ man,” he told Guitar World in June 1996, quoted by Blabbermouth. Some of the riffs, he said, dated back to the Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display of Power periods.
Is It Pantera’s Heaviest Album?
Most people who made it seem to think so. Vinnie Paul called it “the most extreme record we’d ever made,” Loudwire reports, and Brown called it “our most experimental record ever.” Wikipedia files it as mostly groove metal, with elements of thrash and death metal.
That mix is the reason thrash fans should hear it. It has some of the band’s fastest tempos and most down-tuned guitars, and our guide to thrash metal vs. death metal covers where that line falls. Against all that, it also uses acoustic guitars and ballads. Anselmo told Revolver the band tried “different stuff musically, with the guitar tones and whatnot,” including “cleaner tones.”
The Great Southern Trendkill Songs: Where to Start
Start with “Floods.” At 6:59 it is the longest track, and Guitar World ranked its solo No. 32 on its list of the 50 greatest guitar solos. Dimebag told Guitar World that some of his leads now had “a melodic, theme-like vibe in places,” and named “Floods” as the example. Its lyrics, Wikipedia notes, plead with God to flood the earth, as in Genesis.
“Drag the Waters” was the lead single, released on April 15, 1996, by East West. Dimebag directed its music video, the album’s only one, according to its Wikipedia entry. East West followed it on May 22 with two promotional singles, “Suicide Note Pt. I” and “Floods.” Guitar World later ranked “Drag the Waters” No. 8 among the 25 greatest Pantera songs.
“Suicide Note” is the album’s hinge, a pair that runs 9:03 together. Part I is a power ballad: Dimebag on 12-string acoustic, Ross Karpelman on keyboards, and a kick drum meant to sound like a heartbeat. Wikipedia says Dime wrote every guitar part the first time he played a 12-string Washburn had sent him. It earned a Best Metal Performance nomination at the 1997 Grammys.
Part II slams the door. It is fast, low-tuned and screamed from start to finish, with a Whammy-pedal riff and a breakdown near the end. Seth Putnam adds vocals. Metal Hammer ranked Part II No. 20 and Part I No. 24 among its 50 best Pantera songs.
The Rest of the Record, Song by Song
The title track opens with screamed vocals, and Putnam also adds vocals to it, “War Nerve” and “13 Steps to Nowhere.” On “13 Steps,” his high-pitched screaming backs Anselmo’s chorus.
“War Nerve” is the press song. When the album came out, the Dallas Observer’s Robert Wilonsky singled it out on May 16, 1996, as Anselmo’s answer to the media that judged him “in one paragraph.” The same review read “The Underground in America” as Anselmo taking sides against punk’s newly fashionable crowd.
“10’s,” the fourth track, later turned up in the English dub of Dragon Ball Z: Broly, The Legendary Super Saiyan. “Living Through Me (Hells’ Wrath)” carries Karpelman’s other keyboard part. The 2016 reissue includes an instrumental version of it.
“The Underground in America” and “(Reprise) Sandblasted Skin” close the album as the two low-G songs, tuned to D with the sixth string dropped to G.
The Great Southern Trendkill Tracklist
Eleven songs, 53:05 in total, all credited to Pantera. The Japanese edition adds a live “Walk” recorded at the Hollywood Palladium on June 27, 1992.
- “The Great Southern Trendkill” (3:47)
- “War Nerve” (4:53)
- “Drag the Waters” (4:55)
- “10’s” (4:49)
- “13 Steps to Nowhere” (3:37)
- “Suicide Note Pt. I” (4:44)
- “Suicide Note Pt. II” (4:19)
- “Living Through Me (Hells’ Wrath)” (4:50)
- “Floods” (6:59)
- “The Underground in America” (4:33)
- “(Reprise) Sandblasted Skin” (5:39)
The Snake Cover and the 2016 Reissue
The cover is a close-up of a coiled snake, its scales lit gold and its forked tongue out, under the Pantera logo in red. We found no reliable credit for who made the image, so we won’t guess.
Pantera toured the album with White Zombie, fresh off 1995’s Astro-Creep: 2000, and Eyehategod, the New Orleans sludge metal band formed in 1988. Twenty years later, on October 21, 2016, the album came back as a two-disc 20th-anniversary edition, announced that August 12.
Disc one is a remaster. Disc two holds twelve unreleased tracks, including early mixes and three songs live from the Dynamo festival in Holland in 1998. A separate LP, The Great Southern Outtakes, collected ten of them. We found no 30th-anniversary reissue as of October 2026.
Eyehategod
Formed in New Orleans in 1988, and a 1996 tour mate of Pantera. They play the second night of The Great NOLA Trendkill, so start with their Bandcamp before November.
Pantera
Formed in Arlington, Texas, in 1981. Start with The Great Southern Trendkill if you want them at their most extreme, or Vulgar Display of Power (1992) if you want the hits first.
Where to Hear It Live
As of October 2026, Pantera has no Texas dates announced. Rotting Corpse, whose 1987 and 1988 demos Vinnie Paul engineered, play the Haltom Theater in Haltom City on November 14 with Iron Jaw. Then they head to Spam’s Bar and Lounge in San Angelo on December 5. Every date is on the shows page.
The album’s 30th year has its own festival. The Great NOLA Trendkill runs November 20 and 21, 2026, at Lakefront Arena in New Orleans, Loudwire reported on September 8. The weekend also marks the November 20 release of Volume V by Anselmo’s other band, Down.
Pantera plays night two, Saturday, November 21, with Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar and Eyehategod, per the band’s lineup post. Dallas’s Power Trip plays night one with Down. “Please come down to my hometown and have a blast the entire weekend!” Anselmo said in the announcement. Tickets are on pantera.com, and new dates show up on Bandsintown.
Lakefront Arena Open
The LSU New Orleans arena (the school was the University of New Orleans until July 2026), home court of the Privateers, hosts both nights of The Great NOLA Trendkill. Pantera headlines it on Saturday, November 21, in Anselmo’s hometown, the city where he sang this album.
Photo: UNO Lakefront Arena via Google
Today’s lineup is Anselmo and Brown with Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante. Dimebag died in 2004 and Vinnie Paul in 2018, according to Wikipedia.
Start with “When It Rains, It Pours” (1987)
It’s an instrumental Vinnie Paul engineered at Pantego in 1987, so you hear the music without a singer, which is how the Texas half of this album was cut too; the song page notes that a 1988 vocal take didn’t survive.
Sources
- Wikipedia: The Great Southern Trendkill
- Loudwire: The Great Southern Trendkill anniversary (Jon Wiederhorn, updated 2023)
- Blabbermouth: Philip Anselmo on ‘The Great Southern Trendkill’ (from Revolver, 2021)
- Blabbermouth: ‘The Great Southern Trendkill: 20th Anniversary Edition’ announced (2016)
- Pantera.com: Terry Date interview from Revolt Magazine (2014)
- Loudwire: The Great NOLA Trendkill festival announced (Lauryn Schaffner, 2026)
- Pantera.com: The Great NOLA Trendkill lineup by night (2026)
- Dallas Observer: Out Here, review of The Great Southern Trendkill (Robert Wilonsky, May 16, 1996)
- Wikipedia: Drag the Waters
- Wikipedia: Suicide Note (song)
- Wikipedia: Floods (Pantera song)
- Wikipedia: Dalworthington Gardens, Texas
- Wikipedia: Pantera
- Wikipedia: Eyehategod
Frequently Asked Questions
When did The Great Southern Trendkill come out?
May 7, 1996, on EastWest and Elektra. It was recorded between October 1995 and February 1996.
Where was The Great Southern Trendkill recorded?
The music was tracked at Chasin’ Jason Studios in Dalworthington Gardens, Texas, a small city surrounded by Arlington. Phil Anselmo recorded his vocals separately at Nothing Studios in New Orleans.
Who produced The Great Southern Trendkill?
Terry Date and Vinnie Paul, with Pantera credited as co-producer. Ulrich Wild is credited for recording. It was the last Pantera album Date worked on.
What songs are on The Great Southern Trendkill?
Eleven: The Great Southern Trendkill; War Nerve; Drag the Waters; 10’s; 13 Steps to Nowhere; Suicide Note Pt. I; Suicide Note Pt. II; Living Through Me (Hells’ Wrath); Floods; The Underground in America; and (Reprise) Sandblasted Skin. It runs 53:05.
How did The Great Southern Trendkill chart?
It debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 with 149,000 copies sold in its first week, reached No. 2 in Australia and No. 17 in the UK, and was certified gold in the US on June 25, 1996. It later went platinum.
What is The Great NOLA Trendkill?
A two-night festival at Lakefront Arena in New Orleans on November 20 and 21, 2026, named after the album in its 30th year. Pantera headlines the second night.
