Vulgar Display of Power is Pantera’s sixth album, released by Atco on February 25, 1992, and recorded in 1991 at Pantego Sound, the small studio Jerry Abbott ran in Pantego, Texas. Terry Date and Vinnie Paul produced it. It debuted at No. 44 on the Billboard 200, went double platinum by 2004, and is the record Phil Anselmo calls “the defining moment of Pantera.”
The Short Version
- Released February 25, 1992, in North America on Atco. Eleven songs, 52:48, all credited to Pantera.
- Recorded in 1991 at Pantego Sound in Pantego, Texas. Produced by Terry Date and Vinnie Paul, mastered at Masterdisk in New York.
- Most songs were written in the studio. The sessions broke for Monsters of Rock in Moscow on September 28, 1991.
- Debuted at No. 44. Gold in 1993, platinum in 1997, double platinum on July 7, 2004.
How Was Vulgar Display of Power Made?
Pantera came home to Texas in 1991 straight off the Cowboys From Hell cycle. That tour had put them on bills with Judas Priest, Exodus, Sepultura and Suicidal Tendencies. Rex Brown told Loudwire in 2017 that the band had played 338 days on that run.
After a short break they went into Pantego Sound, the studio owned by Jerry Abbott, father of Darrell and Vinnie Paul. The room’s own history, from country sessions to the thrash demos, is in our Pantego Sound article. Terry Date came back to produce, this time with Vinnie Paul sharing the credit.
Very little was written in advance. According to Jon Wiederhorn’s Loudwire anniversary feature, only “A New Level,” “Regular People (Conceit)” and “No Good (Attack the Radical)” were demoed. Everything else took shape in the studio, and Pantera never demoed another song before recording after this album.
“We never were a big band on doing preproduction or demos or anything.”
That is Vinnie Paul in the same Loudwire piece. He added that the band wanted to “capture the initial vibe of the song,” and the only way to do that was to record it as they wrote it. Darrell wrote most of the riffs and song structures. Jerry Abbott remembered his son’s four-track: “Darrell had his four-track that he slept with.”
The sessions were slow and exact. “Dime would always put the guitars down first and then I would put the bass down,” Brown said. “We would sit there for hours and microscope each individual note.” He put the era in one line: “This was before you had any ProTools or anything like that.” Jerry Abbott summed the band up in one line: “Pantera were totally driven, as driven as anybody could ever be.”
Why Did Pantera Stop Recording to Play Moscow?
About two months into the sessions, Pantera were invited to open the 1991 Monsters of Rock show in Moscow for AC/DC and Metallica. The free concert took place at Tushino airfield on September 28, 1991, per Wikipedia. Then the band flew back to Pantego and kept working.
“The crowd treated us like Led Zeppelin even though most of them had never heard of us,” Vinnie Paul told Loudwire. Most of that crowd, he said, had only heard Metallica and AC/DC on black-market copies. Anselmo summed up the mood the band brought home: “The music just bled out of us.”
When the album was done, the band flew to New York to master it at Masterdisk. Vinnie Paul remembered Darrell on the couch, crying through the playback of the finished sequence. When his brother asked if he was all right, Darrell said, “It’s perfect. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I always wanted and always dreamed of.”
Is Vulgar Display of Power a Thrash Album?
It is usually filed as groove metal, and Wikipedia describes Pantera as a groove metal band. But the album was made with thrash in mind. When Metallica released its self-titled album in 1991, Pantera saw it as a letdown, believing Metallica had “abandoned the thrash metal sound” of its earlier records. Pantera “felt they had an opportunity to fill a gap,” Wikipedia says, and “set out to make the heaviest record of all time.”
The result kept thrash’s speed in places, as on the 2:48 “Fucking Hostile,” but built most songs on mid-tempo riffs and space. “Walk” is the clearest case: Darrell first played its riff at a Cowboys From Hell soundcheck, and it sits in a slow 12/8 swing. Loudwire describes the range as running from “the slow, simple sludge of ‘Walk’ to the sledgehammer ferocity of ‘Fucking Hostile.’”
Reviewers heard the link to early thrash too. Janiss Garza of Entertainment Weekly called it “one of the most satisfying heavy metal records since Metallica’s early-80s cult days.” How groove metal took over from thrash in the early 1990s is covered in our piece on how thrash survived the decade.
The Same Room, Five Years Earlier
This album has a direct line to this site’s band. Rotting Corpse cut its first demo at Pantego Sound in spring 1986 with Jerry Abbott engineering, then its second and third there in 1987 and 1988 with Vinnie Paul at the board, as the band history and discography record. Walt Trachsler had been Darrell’s guitar tech before starting the band.
Pantego Sound Studio Closed 1996
The studio opened in 1973 as Blue Royal Sound, later became Jerry Abbott’s Pantego Sound, and closed in 1996. Pantera recorded Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display of Power here, and Rotting Corpse cut three demos in the same room between 1986 and 1988. The building still stands, unmaintained; our Pantego Sound history tells the rest.
The band’s archive has no photo of the working studio, so this card shows the original cassette art for F*ck It, It’s Only Thrash, the 1987 demo Vinnie Paul engineered here; side two carries the three songs from the 1986 Pantego demo. Image: Rotting Corpse archive.
So when Pantera went in to make Vulgar Display of Power in 1991, they were working in the room where Rotting Corpse had cut its demos three to five years earlier. The timeline has the dates, including the third demo’s studio time, paid for with a boat.
Was the Man on the Cover Really Punched?
No. The cover was shot by Brad Guice, who had also shot the Cowboys From Hell cover. Wikipedia says Darrell came up with the idea while playing with a photocopier, dragging a photo across the glass to smear the face. The band asked Atco for “something vulgar, like a dude getting punched.” The label’s first try showed a boxing glove, which the band turned down, so a bare fist replaced it.
A story spread for years that the model was paid $10 a punch and hit about thirty times. In 2012 Guice told the Canadian site PureGrainAudio, as Blabbermouth reported, that it never happened.
“[The man on the cover] was never punched. The legend is totally false.”
Guice named the model as Sean Cross, sent over by a modeling agency when he couldn’t find a long-haired model. He called the shoot “a very rehearsed setup,” with the fist pushing Cross’s face hard but never landing a blow. The title is borrowed from The Exorcist (1973): “That’s much too vulgar a display of power, Karras.”
Vulgar Display of Power Songs: Where to Start
Start where the record does, with “Mouth for War.” It was the first single, released September 21, 1992, and the band’s first chart entry, at No. 73 in the UK. Wikipedia notes it became the theme for MTV’s Headbangers Ball.
Then “Walk,” the song most people know. Released as a single on February 15, 1993, it reached No. 35 in the UK, the band’s first top 40 hit there. Wikipedia says Rolling Stone ranked it No. 29 on its 2023 list of the greatest heavy metal songs.
“A New Level” is the third essential. It was one of the three songs demoed before Terry Date arrived, and Metal Hammer’s 2016 track-by-track ranking calls it “a heartfelt manifesto” that lives up to its hook. Dom Lawson’s 2019 Metal Hammer list of the 50 greatest Pantera songs hears “a series of visceral, fidgeting riffs” that “pretty much summed up the whole” album.
“Fucking Hostile” is the thrash song here. It lasts 2:48, and the same Metal Hammer ranking put it at No. 1 of the eleven, calling it “essentially a thrash metal song” built for the pit. “Rise” comes straight out of the end of “This Love” and, in that ranking’s words, outstrips even “Fucking Hostile” for “speed metal intensity.”
The two long, slow songs show the band’s range. “This Love” opens quietly before breaking into a crushing chorus, and its video was one of the three the band made for the album. “Hollow” closes the record, moving from a melodic opening to a furious final riff section. Garza heard both as ballads whose “tough edge slashes painfully through deep introspection.”
The second half of the record rewards repeat plays. “No Good (Attack the Radical)” and “Regular People (Conceit)” were the other two pre-session demos; Metal Hammer counts at least three riffs in “Regular People” before Anselmo sings a word. “Live in a Hole” is the slow-burner with no real chorus, carried by a “weird, loping groove” and a Dimebag solo midway through. “By Demons Be Driven” rides a lumbering groove, and its final riff is the one the magazine calls “ridiculously fucking heavy.” It later turned up in the 2015 film The Big Short, per Wikipedia.
Vulgar Display of Power Track Listing
Eleven songs, all credited to Pantera, 52:48 in total, per Wikipedia.
- “Mouth for War” (3:57)
- “A New Level” (3:57)
- “Walk” (5:14)
- “Fucking Hostile” (2:48)
- “This Love” (6:32)
- “Rise” (4:36)
- “No Good (Attack the Radical)” (4:49)
- “Live in a Hole” (5:00)
- “Regular People (Conceit)” (5:27)
- “By Demons Be Driven” (4:40)
- “Hollow” (5:48)
Pantera
Formed in Arlington, Texas, in 1981. Start with Vulgar Display of Power (1992), then go back to Cowboys From Hell (1990). Anselmo and Brown lead today’s lineup, with Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante filling in.
How Well Did Vulgar Display of Power Sell?
It debuted at No. 44 on the Billboard 200. That was its peak, but it stayed on the chart for 78 consecutive weeks, the longest run of any Pantera album. “Even at 44 – that was unbelievable,” Brown told Loudwire. The RIAA certified it gold on February 9, 1993, platinum on November 7, 1997, and double platinum on July 7, 2004.
Loudwire calls it Pantera’s biggest album, even though the next one, Far Beyond Driven, entered at No. 1 in 1994. Wikipedia, citing Luminate, puts US sales at 2,350,000 as of the end of 2024. It also charted at No. 64 in the UK.
A 20th-anniversary deluxe edition came out on May 15, 2012, per Blabbermouth’s announcement. It adds “Piss,” an unreleased track from the sessions, plus a DVD filmed at Monsters of Rock in Reggio Emilia, Italy, on September 12, 1992, and the videos for “Mouth for War,” “This Love” and “Walk.” Dimebag Darrell died in 2004 and Vinnie Paul in 2018.
Where to Hear It Live
As of October 2026, Pantera has no Texas dates announced. The North Texas side of this story still plays, though. Rotting Corpse, who cut their demos in the same Pantego room, play The Mix in San Antonio on October 24 and Kinda Tropical in Austin on October 26. They’re back in the Metroplex at the Haltom Theater in Haltom City on November 14 with Iron Jaw, then Spam’s Bar and Lounge in San Angelo on December 5. Every date is on the shows page.
Pantera’s only announced show is Saturday, November 21, 2026, night two of The Great NOLA Trendkill at Lakefront Arena, 6801 Franklin Ave, New Orleans, with Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar and Eyehategod, per the band’s lineup post. Night one, November 20, has Down, Black Label Society and Dallas’s Power Trip, and pantera.com bills it as one ticket for both nights. Tickets are linked from the Lakefront Arena event page; new dates will show up on pantera.com and Bandsintown.
Start with “Evolvement” (1987)
It is the only song that survives from both of Rotting Corpse’s Vinnie Paul sessions at Pantego, in 1987 and 1988, so it’s the closest you can get to hearing that room before Pantera made this record there; the words are on the lyrics page.
Sources
- Loudwire: Pantera’s ‘Vulgar Display of Power’ anniversary (Jon Wiederhorn)
- Loudwire Legacy: The Making of ‘Vulgar Display of Power’, Part 1 (Joe DiVita, 2017)
- Wikipedia: Vulgar Display of Power
- Wikipedia: Mouth for War
- Wikipedia: Walk (Pantera song)
- Wikipedia: Pantera
- Blabbermouth: The debunked story of the ‘Vulgar Display of Power’ cover (2017)
- Blabbermouth: ‘Vulgar Display of Power’ deluxe edition due in May (2012)
- Metal Hammer (Louder): Every song on Vulgar Display of Power ranked from worst to best (2016)
- Metal Hammer (Louder): The 50 greatest Pantera songs (Dom Lawson, 2019)
- Lakefront Arena: The Great NOLA Trendkill, Night 2
- Pantera.com: The Great NOLA Trendkill lineup by night (2026)
- Consequence: Pantera to headline The Great NOLA Trendkill (2026)
- Bandsintown: Pantera tour dates
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Vulgar Display of Power come out?
February 25, 1992, in North America, on Atco Records. Wikipedia gives February 24 for the UK release. It was Pantera’s second album for Atco, after Cowboys From Hell.
Where was Vulgar Display of Power recorded?
At Pantego Sound in Pantego, Texas, the studio owned by Jerry Abbott, father of Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul, in 1991. Terry Date and Vinnie Paul produced it, and it was mastered at Masterdisk in New York.
Was the man on the Vulgar Display of Power cover really punched?
No. Photographer Brad Guice said the model, Sean Cross, was never punched and that the story of $10 a punch was “totally false.” The shot was a rehearsed studio setup with the fist pressing against his face.
What songs are on Vulgar Display of Power?
Eleven: Mouth for War, A New Level, Walk, Fucking Hostile, This Love, Rise, No Good (Attack the Radical), Live in a Hole, Regular People (Conceit), By Demons Be Driven and Hollow, 52:48 in all. The 2012 deluxe edition adds the session track Piss.
Where does the title Vulgar Display of Power come from?
From the 1973 film The Exorcist, in the line “That’s much too vulgar a display of power, Karras.”
How many copies has Vulgar Display of Power sold?
The RIAA certified it gold in 1993, platinum in 1997 and double platinum on July 7, 2004. Wikipedia, citing Luminate, puts US sales at 2,350,000 as of the end of 2024. Loudwire calls it Pantera’s biggest album.
