Reinventing the Steel

Background

In Australia a two-disc Tour Edition of the album was released. The first disc consists of the album proper, while the second is an unofficial hits compilation.

Unlike other Pantera releases, two b-sides were recorded during the Reinventing the Steel sessions, those being "Avoid The Light" and "Immortally Insane", found on the Dracula 2000 and Heavy Metal 2000 soundtracks, respectively

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 the band's main influences. The band members dedicated Reinventing the Steel to their fans, whom they viewed as their brothers and sisters.

Artwork

The cover art is a snapshot taken from the video of "Revolution Is My Name", the first single of the album.

Critical reception

It 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 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, the album has yet to reach platinum status, making it Pantera's only major label studio album not to reach sales of 1,000,000.

Rolling Stone (5/25/00, p. 73) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "Metal-revivalist....relying on the genre's primal elements of rage and analog noise...chopped up with squealing dissonance....brutal enough to please underground purists and familiar enough for weekend headbangers."

Entertainment Weekly (3/24/00, p. 102) - "...resumes their scorched-earth policy with vigor....dropping aural anvils [along] with a dash of inventiveness..." - Rating: B+

Q magazine (6/00, p. 112) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Pantera's attempt to upgrade [Judas Priest's] British Steel-era pure metal spirit....unequivocal heavy metalness."

Alternative Press (7/00, pp. 108–9) - 5 out of 5 - "An undiluted, unvarnished slab of riffs paying distinct homage to Judas Priest's British Steel, and not just in a titular sense, but in basic song construction."

CMJ (4/3/00, p. 32) - "Crammed with everything they've used to revolutionize metal....so old-school it could have been easily made in between the quartet's back-to-back classics."

NME (4/15/00, p. 34) - 6 out of 10 - "An unfashionably old-school metal album....it's Pantera's bid to herald the rebirth of bullet-belt, cut-off denim metal....It's a solid album, oozing drunk-as-hell metal spirit."

Accolades

In the 2000 Metal Edge Readers' Choice Awards, the album was voted "Album of the Year" and "Album Cover of the Year" (tying with Iron Maiden's Brave New World for the latter), while the single Revolution Is My Name won "Song of the Year".

"Revolution Is My Name" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2001, but lost to Deftones' "Elite".

The album was ranked at #2 on Guitar World's Readers Poll for "The Top 10 Guitar Albums of 2000".

Track listing

All tracks written by Pantera.

Personnel