Pantera’S Popularity Growing

Over the last 20 years, heavy metal has undergone several transformations, from the blissfully pummeling riffs of Black Sabbath to a preoccupation with long, drawn-out epics a la Iron Maiden to Metallicastyle speed metal.

Several derivations of the music, like death metal and grunge have also popped up. The Texas quartet Pantera leads the way among the latest breed of metal bands employing mechanical, jackhammerfriendly, power grooves matched with roaring, primal vocals.

Pantera, which has stormed its way into the mainstream, plays the Spokane Coliseum with its cohorts Sepultura and Prong Tuesday. The band is also one of only a few of its type gaining a stronghold among the alternative rock scene and the metal crowd. Yet, its appeal lies mostly with the headbangers.

Presently, the band stands as the metal genre’s premier heavyweight contender with its penchant for driving, punishing songs.

Pantera is an angry band for these angry times. The band’s ferocious, throaty front-man Philip Anselmo’s flesh-tearing rants are testimony. His songs, blunt and confrontational in nature, address issues common to Pantera’s audience, like overwhelming frustrations, pressures and insecurity.

Though the band’s popularity has seen a steady incline from the time its first album came out, the group hasn’t compromised its integrity for the sake of large audience. This gives the foursome free reign to write songs as brutally raw and as monstrous as it wants. And with the release of “Far Beyond Driven,” Pantera’s most corrosive effort to date, the group is more popular than ever.

“Far Beyond Driven” baffled the music industry when it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts in March, selling some 186,000 copies in its first week of release.

The band’s other two releases, 1992’s “Vulgar Display of Power” and 1991’s “Cowboys from Hell,” also sold impressively well. Together, both albums have sold more than 1.5 million copies.

Pantera has one of the strongest fan bases of any band in the country. The first leg of its headline tour - four week’s worth of concert dates - sold out immediately. So far, all of the group’s successes have been achieved without media hype.

Even with a shiny new, groundbreaking platinum album, MTV continues to doubt the band’s appeal by giving “Far Beyond Driven’s” first single, “I’m Broken,” sporadic airplay. The network has mostly restricted the band’s airplay to the weekly “Headbanger’s Ball,” a late-night Saturday video show dedicated solely to the bands that, as “Beavis and Butt-head” would say, rock. Radio programmers have also excluded Pantera from regular rotation.

Pantera’s legion of fans grows, rather, by followers hyping the band among their unconverted friends. The band knows this. That’s why it treats its audience with respect, a performing aspect many of its peers overlook.

Pantera burst onto the scene with the album “Cowboys From Hell.” That release, though, was comparably more tame than its successor, “Vulgar Display of Power.”

“Vulgar Display of Power,” which stepped up the band’s relentless assault, received the stamp of approval from millions of metalheads, who were left disappointed after the release of Metallica’s 1991 “Black” album.

“Vulgar” contended a band doesn’t have to compromise its style to sell records. The iron-clad album enjoyed well-deliberated riffs and urgent grooves as well as Anselmo’s battering vocals on the songs “… Hostile” and “Mouth for War.”

Now, with the striking “Far Beyond Driven,” the fate of heavy metal lies in the hands of Pantera.

The metal/thrash bands Sepultura and Prong should do well to provoke a frenzied mosh pit.

Preview Pantera, Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., the Coliseum Tickets: $21.50