PANTERA – Reinventing the Steel CD

Description

Label: Elektra – 7559-62451-2
Format: CD, Album, Enhanced
Country: Europe
Released: 14 Mar 2000
Style: Groove Metal
1 Hellbound 2:41
2 Goddamn Electric 4:56 Lead Guitar [Outro] – Kerry King
3 Yesterday Don’t Mean Sh** 4:19
4 You’ve Got To Belong To It 4:13
5 Revolution Is My Name 5:15
6 Death Rattle 3:17
7 We’ll Grind That Axe For A Long Time 3:44
8 Uplift 3:45
9 It Makes Them Disappear 6:21
10 I’ll Cast A Shadow 5:22

Reinventing the Steel is the ninth and final studio album by American heavy metal band Pantera, released on March 21, 2000 through Elektra Records and East West Records. This was the last studio album Pantera released before their nineteen-year breakup from November 2003 to July 2022, and it is the band’s final album to feature the Abbott brothers Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul, before their deaths in 2004 and 2018, respectively.

Background
Reinventing the Steel was produced by the Abbott brothers in addition to Sterling Winfield, making it Pantera’s first studio album since 1988’s Power Metal not to be produced by Terry Date.

Lyrics and style
Reinventing the Steel contains lyrics mostly about the band itself, as on “We’ll Grind that Axe for a Long Time” (where the band members tell about how they have kept it “true” throughout the years, while many of their peers “sucked up for the fame”) and “I’ll Cast a Shadow” (about Pantera’s influence on the genre). There are also songs about their fans, like “Goddamn Electric” and “You’ve Got to Belong to It”. “Goddamn Electric” mentions Black Sabbath and Slayer, two of Pantera’s main influences. The solo for “Goddamn Electric” was recorded by Kerry King in a bathroom after Slayer performed at Ozzfest in Dallas. The band members dedicated Reinventing the Steel to their fans who they viewed as their “brothers and sisters”.

Pantera & Slayer on the Extreme Steel Tour 2001.

Artwork
The cover art is by Scott Caliva (1967–2003), a friend of Pantera lead singer Phil Anselmo. Caliva took the photo of a partygoer at Anselmo’s house jumping through a bonfire clutching a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey. The bottle is pixelated on the cover so the label would not be visible, to avoid trademark infringement.

The 20th Anniversary Edition cover art was only made with the steel marking background, along with the logo and the album name similar to their 1990 album, Cowboys from Hell.

Reinventing the Steel reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 chart, number 8 on the Top Canadian Albums chart, and number 5 on the Top Internet Albums chart. It held its position in the Billboard 200 for over 12 weeks. The record sold more than 161,000 copies in its first week of release. The album’s fifth track, “Revolution Is My Name”, reached number 28 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks. The album was certified gold by the RIAA on May 2, 2000, however, it has yet to reach platinum status, making it Pantera’s only major-label studio album not to reach sales of 1,000,000.

In a 2022 interview, Rex Brown blamed the album’s lacklustre success compared to the band’s previous albums on the dominance of the nu metal genre at the time of its release.