>Out of curiosity, where'd you grow up? Wondering if there's a
>regional thing at work here. Pantera has always seemed to me
>to be VERY southern/redneck in a way that
>non-southerners/rednecks might not appreciate.

I'm from small-town Indiana (still in Indianapolis, though I'm moving very soon to Georgia). So definitely no stranger to redneckiness and a slight Southern tinge, too. I tend toward the nerdy/intellectual side, but one of my closest cousins from the same hometown is about as redneck as it gets: beat up his abusive stepfather in high school and moved between a couple relatives' houses for the last two years of school; joined the army as soon as humanly possible and fought in the Gulf War; went directly from the military to being a prison guard, and is exactly as scary-looking as you'd expect given that career path. Yet this is the guy who introduced me to Queensryche, Megadeth, and more.

A lot of my other metal resources in high school were yer basic redneck burnouts from broken homes - the sort of guys who would be playing D&D with you one day, getting expelled for drug possession the next, and disappear off the face of the earth by the weekend. I first heard a lot of bands through those dudes, often just by seeing them printed on a t-shirt. One of those guys was in shop with me and first exposed me to the Exodus cover of "Lowrider" - no idea why that still sticks with me, but it does. He kind of looked like Dave Mustaine too, with frizzier hair and acne.