Artist: Pantera
Release Title: I Am The Night
Release Type: Full Length Album
Release Year: 1985
Artist Genre: Heavy Metal
Artist Origin: USA
My Rating: 76%
Track Listing: 1. Hot and Heavy 2. I Am The Night 3. Onward We Rock 4. D*G*T*T*M 5. Daughters Of The Queen 6. Down Below 7. Come-On Eyes 8. Right On The Edge 9. Valhalla 10. Forever Tonight
Total playing time: 37:51
As Pantera progressed through the 80's, heavier influences became more predominant in the sound. They started looking starry eyed more at their Priest and Metallica records than their Van Halen and Kiss ones. Yeah they still looked like ugly female gym teachers but they were really rocking their socks off and making modestly good 80's metal albums. That's not to say you won't hear some "ooo baby's" on here cos you will but most of it is definitely metal in the Malice/early 80's Priest/Keel mode. Not some generic Poison copycat that many idiot fans of the groove metal era would have you believe. The album productions pretty rough and coarse but not bad enough that you can't enjoy it. The formula for the album is pretty similar to "Projects In The Jungle" the previous year with the ballad track, a couple of speed metal burners, some mid paced crushers and a couple of glam ditties. You can hear a mp3 upload of the album's title track above. This mp3 upload is a perfect display of the quality of the album.
Must hear album tracks that you should download would be the title track, "Down Below" and "Valhalla", the catchy "Right On The Edge" and the closing ballad "Forever Tonight" which they nail with some finesse. "D.G.T.T.M" is a disposable piece of guitar noodling with bizarre monster voices and screaming, pretty stupid. "Hot and Heavy" is an embarrassing track with double entendres that would make Spinal Tap squirm.
Overall a solid 80s metal album. It's so ignored because the band belittled it because the glammy image and music was a contradiction of their suddenly new TUFF, socially relevant, grunge conscious reputation and of course all their fanboys nodded along and acted like what they said was gospel. Help turn the opinion of the 80's albums around by listening to it and recommending it to a friend. Get mp3 downloads of the tracks I recommended and then buy from Amazon if you like it!
