The Artwork That Should Not Be #9: “Reinventing The Steel” by Pantera!

For so many Pantera were a band that could do no wrong. The Arlington Texas quartet recorded what turned out to be their final album in 1999 with Sterling Winfield at the production helm as more of an assistant for Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell than anything else. He’d later go on and do the same thing for the post-Pantera projects Hellyeah and Damageplan. It’s a strange album for a number of reasons. In the sessions for the album they recorded a a trio of additional tracks in “Immortality Insane”, “Avoid The Light” and Black Sabbath cover “Hole In The Sky”, when previously they’d had no material left from recording sessions. There was a lot of in fighting within the ranks and as a result there are no high energy explosions or impressive band chemistry like the previous outings. Instead it’s a far more by the numbers album and for that reason alone it hasn’t reached the sales figures that it’s predecessors did. But it is far from a bad release. “Yesterday Don’t Mean Sh*t” is a track that brings the groove metal like few others while “Revolution Is My Name” actually shows some growth in the band. The question is… Why does a snapshot from the video from that single get picked for the cover art? A badly CGI’d man leaping in some badly CGI’d flames? Total lack of effort. What makes it worse is that in their back catalogue the have one of the iconic metal album covers of all time in “Vulgar Display of Power”.