POP REVIEW : Pantera Plays Unsuitable Shrine

The Shrine Exhibition Hall is a splendid old room, long and severe, cavernous really, with mega-high vaulted ceilings and groovy detailing and extra-wide balconies; room for thousands. Unfortunately, it seems to be rather unsuitable for rock ‘n’ roll.

When the Texas thrash-metal band Pantera played the hall on Monday, the effect was not unlike standing in a subway tunnel for an hour, listening to trains clack and screech around a curve. While Pantera is considered quite progressive within metal circles, it’s still not what you’d call an industrial band. If you didn’t already know the tunes, it was pretty hard to tell what Pantera actually sounded like.

Anthem after anthem, token ballads too, Pantera’s got that chunka-chunka headbanger thing down pat: power grooves and howls of anguish, the power to move the pit. Dozens of kids roiled about the stage as if in line at a high dive, patiently waiting their turn to somersault, float, cannonball into the swirling crowd below. Sometimes they’d swagger over toward the singer and bark along with the words. Most of the time, they’d just bump into one another really hard, then laugh. The lyrics may be political and all, but Monday, Pantera was basically a dance band.