Rebel Meets Rebel - Rebel Meets Rebel (CD)

All Music Guide

Rebel Meets Rebel is the result of a lengthy collaboration between Pantera's rhythm section and outlaw country legend David Allan Coe. The partnership began in the late '90s with Coe and Dimebag Darrell meeting in Fort Worth and discovering they were kindred spirits. They decided to record together in 1999, and over the next four years, Coe, Dimebag, and Pantera's rhythm section recorded sporadically. Those sessions were released as Rebel Meets Rebel in 2006, two years after Dimebag's tragic onstage murder while playing with the group Damageplan. Rebel Meets Rebel in no way attempts to blend the styles of heavy metal and country rather it just throws them together, one on the top of the other, at times outweighing each other. The result is two completely different sounds crashing together and creating something entirely new out of the smashed remnants. The album's first track, "Nothin' to Lose," hits hard with a White Zombieesque intro, featuring a moaning female and choppy distorted ...guitar, leading way to the musical collision. On first listen, the song sounds awkward as if someone had spliced a Pantera song together with a David Allan Coe one on their home computer. It doesn't mesh well, and the bass seems too sharp and tinny. But after listening to the album a few times, it starts to make more sense. Dimebag's ability to switch between piercing thrash and beautifully dark melodies is one of his attributes that garnered him such acclaim, and it's there on Rebel Meets Rebel. And he is complemented by not only his bandmates but by guest performers, like Joey Floyd's fiddle breakdown on "Rebel Meets Rebel" and added metal growl from Hank Williams III on "Get Outta My Life." Read more Less