This song is a master's clinic in the principles of heaviness.
Principles in play that I've previously covered:
* Two notes, close interval - check. This is the basis of the main, opening riff.
* Blues scale - check. The transition between the opening riff and verse is a theoretically whacked-out blues scale. The middle development and solo are also filled with a number of heavy blues scales.
* Hit the tonic note hard - check. The verses are essentially this, with a single chord (with subtle fingering variations) smashing in unison with the drums. Bonus: A delicious odd meter opens up unconventional rhythmic possibilities for the guitars/drums to crush.
New principles:
* Crash cymbal on the down and back beats: The opening riff takes the two notes, close interval principle and mixes it with this staple of heavy percussion: Drums on a simple one-two, kick-snare. And on each beat, the crash cymbal is being beaten to a pulp. You can play a Mozart rondo over drums like this and it will be savage. It is beyond a "heavy" principle. It gets into knowledge even more esoteric: The principles of head banging. Two-beats of this variety goad the head to swing.
* Drums accenting a scale: The instrumental transitions in play between verse stanzas and into choruses use this, the guitars in a vibrato downward scale, each note accented by a savage cymbal strike. It's a cousin to the "hit the tonic note hard" principle, but extending it to additional notes in the scale.
* Give those drums room!: As shown in the epic close of the guitar solo, there can sometimes be nothing as brutal as muting those guitars early and giving the drums choice gaps to smash through. It also brings a heavy impact to the next beat the guitars do play on.
These are simplistic summaries of the heaviness at play here. The truth is, very, very few bands threw so many principles of heaviness together in so many varied, hybridized, and rapid-fire ways as Pantera did. Their sophistication within this narrow world was off the charts. For being a bunch of Southern bumpkins, their musical acumen was elite order.
This extends to their talents as pure songwriters. When I was a teenager, I learned a lot about song structure from Pantera. Their CD liners provided not only lyrics but called out the formal sections of their songs (verse, chorus, pre-chorus, bridge, outtro, etc.). To have music this aggressive playing at top volume but also having it be a serious musical appreciation session was the kind of cognitive dissonance that still makes Pantera so addictively contradictory to me. I DEFY you to keep track of all the sections in this song (I don't go all-caps often). It morphs through numerous formal segments that are nevertheless interrelated and not just a mindless procession of thrash opportunities.
But now we get to the lyrics of this song. The song is a violence fantasy against a critic of the band, the father of a boy who was extensively beaten at a Pantera/Megadeth concert back in those heady days of mainstream metal. Not satisfied to exhibit simple violent savagery, there is an explicit accusation of "reverse racism" with all implications of white nationalism that it brings along with it.
You can go all over the map with what this means. I'll give my two cents, because I feel like somewhat of an authority.
I played heavy music for a long time, and I played in the most rural backwater you can find. My band started out simply wanting to write grunge mosh music, but we began adding heavier metal headbanging elements to what we were doing. Our popularity culminated in a handful of memorable packed performances at the largest halls available in the town, teeming with sweaty aggression.
North Dakota is currently in the throes of one of the most significant oil booms in world history. A whole new level of prosperity and outsider incursion is occurring right now, transforming the state into a frankenstein that year after year bears less resemblance to the place I called home. When I lived in Bismarck, North Dakota, we were a poor state. The roads and other infrastructure were horrible, the employment laughable. In our modest metro area of around 60,000 people, trailer parks covered expansive areas all around town. Entire districts of adjacent trailer parks. My grade school was surrounded on ALL sides by trailer parks. I considered myself lucky in that I was an apartment kid; then due to my mom's tenacity, we eventually moved up into a house in an affordable housing community just outside the Bismarck city limits.
I got to know a lot of kids living in these low-income areas. We played ball in the parks, trash talked, scrapped, joked, pile drivered each other. As teenagers, guys like this became a good share of the people who would come out to our shows. Most of them were incredibly sweet, affable, and intelligent. But their frustration and anger at their living conditions and future prospects found its expression in their music and in their appearances. They would horrify the eyes of middle class society.
My band and others like us who got their acts together were a lot of the entertainment for these kids, as well as other more well-off appreciators. Almost zero national bands ever came through our town. Garth Brooks did a few multi-night stands, but come on. Our shows took place in Amvets and Legion halls, and we would contract the spaces, rent the sound equipment, book the lineup of bands, run promotion, and distribute the proceeds all on our own. Large amounts of young folks turned out for these shows because A. we were that good and B. there was nowhere else to turn.
In my time in Bismarck, we hosted only three notable rock concerts: Kiss (saw it), White Zombie (mom forbade it, now my brother is friends with them), and Pantera.
I was at that Pantera show. After a few numbers, Pantera singer/screamer Phil Anselmo confessed to the crowd, "I only know one thing about North Dakota, and that's Virgil Hill." Anselmo was/is a huge boxing fan, and our Virgil Hill was at the time the light heavyweight champion, the sole North Dakota "celebrity." The crowd roared. A man of violent music, name checking a man of literal violence, applauded by a crowd whose attraction to violence was more deep-seated than anyone might suspect. And it all happened in the middle of nowhere, in a completely neglected backwater with no corporate value (yet). Essentially it didn't really happen, except that it did, because I'm now telling you.