“Cemetery Gates” is a song by the heavy metal band Pantera from their 1990 album Cowboys From Hell

Even if you don’t listen to this type of music, there’s still a decent chance that you might have heard of this band because of 2 things: The song “Cowboys From Hell” appeared on Guitar Hero 2, and their guitarist, Dimebag Darrell, died in an extremely unorthodox way, which I’ll talk about later in the blog

Although Cowboys From Hell was the band’s 5th album, it is what essentially introduced the world to Pantera due to the fact it was their major label debut, and it still remains their most popular album and probably my favorite as well. As much as I do love the song “Cowboys From Hell”, I’m glad that this one came up on shuffle because it offers a little bit of a different side of Pantera. To be more specific, I really like the use of the slow acoustic riffs and soft vocals at both the beginning of the song and throughout. Tempo changes like that entertain my short attention span, and it’s kinda rare to see metal bands go from 0 to 100 like that, seeing as metal tends to just be fast and loud to begin with

Since I brought it up a little earlier, let’s talk about the late Dimebag Darrell. No matter what your opinion on Pantera is—a lot of people hate them—there is no denying that Dimebag Darrell was a talented guitarist and was influential in the metal genre. Unfortunately, he is remembered a lot more for the crazy way that he died instead of his guitar skills, so let’s get into that

Pantera broke up in 2003, and at the time of his death, Darrell was on tour with another band that he founded: Damageplan. Only minutes into a concert at a tiny venue in Columbus, Ohio, a man ran on stage, gun in hand, and shot Darrell 5 times from point blank range. Given the band’s metal demeanor, some people in the crowd thought it was just part of the show. It wasn’t until the gunman started firing into the crowd that they realized this was, in fact, an actual armed crazy person that wanted to kill everybody

The shooting became somewhat intermittent while people tried to subdue the gunman, and thankfully cops arrived quickly and blew this asshole’s brains out with a 12 gauge shotgun blast to the face. Unfortunately, by then, he had already killed 4 people (Darrell, the band’s head of security, an employee of the venue, and an audience member who was shot while trying to resuscitate Darrell), as well as wounded 7 others

There is a lot of speculation behind the shooter’s motives, with the 2 most popular theories being that he was a disgruntled fan who was upset about Pantera’s breakup and blamed it on Darrell, or that he was just a violent lunatic who snapped. I think it was the latter, but the fan thing is very interesting because coincidentally Darrell’s murder happened on the 24th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, and if the fan thing is true you can definitely draw some similarities between the 2 (Such as John Lennon broke up The Beatles, Darrell broke up Pantera)

Dimebag Darrell’s grave in Arlington, Texas has become a bit of a shrine for fans, many of which leave behind dimes and even actual dime bags of weed atop his headstone. If I’m ever in the area, I plan to do the same, while most likely blasting this song on my way through the gates of the cemetery

Now I’m not huge into Pantera overall, mainly because I’m not a biker with multiple DUI’s on my record, but they do have some good songs and are definitely good drinking music. For that, I am thankful. Lastly, Rest In Peace to Dimebag Darrell, and fuck the coward that ended your life

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LYRICS