The lead single and title track from Pantera’s fifth album effectively served as a mission statement for a new phase of their career, announcing who they were and what they were hoping to achieve.

Released in 1990, Cowboys From Hell was the sound of the Texan band drawing a line through the four glam-influenced records they’d released during the ’80s and starting afresh, with a more aggressive sonic template that would lay the blueprint for the ‘groove metal’ movement that soon followed.

In a 2010 interview with Metal Hammer, drummer Vinnie Paul admitted that after their fourth album, 1988’s Power Metal, the band looked at themselves and realised change would be needed for their major label debut.

“We decided to drop the image and focus more on the music and kick as much ass as possible,” he remarked, noting: “These fancy clothes and all this crazy hair ain’t playing music for us!”

With the benefit of hindsight, it would be fair to say many asses were kicked.

Cowboys From Hell starts with a strange swirling noise that isn’t a million miles away from the rhythmic churn of a train engine before guitarist Dimebag Darrell introduces the song’s signature riff.

“That whooshing noise at the beginning was a loop we made for Dime to play over,” bassist Rex Brown once told Metal Hammer. “And it was very repetitious and very fuckin’ annoying for a long while. He developed that whole riff over that.”

The riff in question ended up becoming one of Pantera’s most recognisable calling cards, played an octave up around the 12th fret before moving the same idea all the way down to open position right as the drums come in.

The idea itself is built off the E Minor blues scale – a sound that Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul picked up from their country music producer father Jerry Abbott.

“That riff is a little form of in-the-box blues scaling,” Rex Brown once noted. “We were always down the street watching all these great blues guys in the studio because Vinnie and Darrell’s dad was an engineer at Pantego Studio. We’d sneak in the studio and sit way underneath the board listening to all this great stuff.”

Brown added: “I think that’s where Dime got the idea for that intro to Cowboys. He started it as a kind of modal exercise because he would practise it forwards and backwards.”

The roots of the song go right back to 1989, when Dimebag supposedly arrived late to a house party in Fort Worth, Texas and told the band’s singer Phil Anselmo that he had a new riff to show him. The pair then walked over to the guitarist’s car and upon hearing the riff, Anselmo instantly knew it was an anthem in the making.

“Well, there was no denying the power of the actual song Cowboys from Hell,” Anselmo told American news website Examiner in 2010. “We knew that was an anthem, for sure. And we knew it was one of our better songs as far as being memorable.”

As for the history behind the title itself, Anselmo once revealed it was inspired by the liner notes of an album recorded by a thrash metal band.

“It was one of them Bay Area bands, I’m thinking of course it was Metallica,” he revealed. “Thinking maybe it was Ride The Lightning, but I could swear it’s Kill ’Em All.”

He continued: “You go through the ‘thank you’ list, on the back of that record they thank the crew people, and then they call them the cowboys from hell. I remember when Darrell played me that riff from Cowboys From Hell, I was like, ‘Goddamn, that would be a fantastic title for the song!’ It was perfect.”

For the recording, Dimebag used his 1981 blue Dean From Hell guitar, which featured a Bill Lawrence XL500 pickup in the bridge and a Seymour Duncan ’59 in the neck, in standard tuning.

The guitar was plugged into a Randall RG100H head with the gain, bass and treble set high and the mids set low.

This infamous ‘mid scoop’ would influence multiple generations of guitar players to come.

“We get asked a lot about the production and whatnot – it being pretty high-end and tinny,” Anselmo told Scottish culture magazine The Skinny in 2010. “All I can say is I think at the time we were really trying to figure out the best way to take the monstrous guitar sound that Darrell had and put it on a record.”

He continued: “You have to understand, we recorded that fucker in 1989 – no Pro Tools, no tricks or whistles. We had to really track that thing.

“We as a band helped change the production of heavy metal records. Cowboys From Hell was a launch pad in many respects – not the actual full figured-out article yet, but it was a great starting point.”

The solo gave the world its first taste of a new guitar hero in the metal scene. Dimebag was very much the full package – blessed with an exceptionally rare ability to both shred and riff like a supreme being.

The solo section begins with some moody discordance between the E root note and its tritone interval Bb – a sound that can be traced back to Black Sabbath’s hugely influential self-titled track of 1970.

Then there are some chromatic ideas where Dimebag plays the 11th, 12th and 15th fret of every string twice – creating tension with notes that are out of key and resolving with the ones that are diatonic.

After some bluesy runs based around the 12th, 14th and 15th frets of the higher strings, Dimebag then introduces two notes that move up chromatically before one final big bend on the 22nd fret of his high E-string.

Cowboys From Hell was the first song written for the album, although by the time they were finishing it, the four members were unconvinced of its merits, feeling it was too tame and commercial compared to the tracks written after it.

Their manager at the time, Walter O’Brien, thankfully managed to convince them otherwise.

“I knew that Pantera were going to be called the Cowboys from Hell from then on,” O’Brien once revealed. “Every great band has a nickname. Bruce Springsteen is the Boss. ZZ Top is that Little Ol’ Band from Texas.”

He added: “Cowboys from Hell was perfect for them. I rarely insist on anything creative from a band, but I just knew it was a massive song. Dimebag put the CFH logo on everything, and he lived that persona.”

Zakk Wylde has revealed that the current line-up of Pantera may yet record new music based on demos recorded by the late Darrell ‘Dimebag’ Abbott.

In an interview with Guitar Interactive, Wylde says that discussions about new recordings are already in progress between himself, singer Phil Anselmo, bassist Rex Brown, drummer Charlie Benante and Dimebag’s former girlfriend Rita Haney.

Haney is in possession of Dimebag’s demos.

Wylde tells Guitar Interactive: “The fellows [Anselmo and Brown] were talking about doing something, and Rita [Haney] has tons of cassette recordings of Dime writing riffs and stuff like that.”

At one point in this interview, Wylde refers to the classic line-up of Pantera - Dimebag, Anselmo, Brown and Dime’s brother Vinnie Paul - and insists: “Pantera is those four guys.”

But he says he is open to working on previously unreleased material from Dimebag’s demos: “If they were, obviously, Dime's original riffs and ideas, yeah, of course,” he says. “That would be cool… if it was something Dime wrote and him and Vinnie were working on or whatever…”

In a previous interview with Eddie Trunk in 2024, Wylde stated that any new music recorded by the quartet of himself, Anselmo, Brown and Benante should not be released under the Pantera name.

“I think you would have to call it something else,” he said. “You know what I mean? Pantera is those four guys. So, yeah, you can't replace that.”

But in that interview Wylde did hint at using Dimebag’s old demos.

"I mean, how could you call it Pantera unless it was just pre-existing material and we were gonna record it — stuff that was in demo state or whatever, and it is songs that the guys wrote. But as far as new songs… you’d call it something else.”

When Phil Anselmo spoke to The Metallica Report podcast in 2024, he claimed that Dimebag and Vinnie Paul would have approved of the new-look Pantera.

"Only thing I can say is, man, I know for a damn fact Vince and Dime would want us to do this, hands down,” Anselmo said. “They would want the Pantera brand or the legacy to go on.

“And I don't know what you believe in, but sometimes, you know, you would like to think that them old fellas are looking down on us, giving us the thumbs-up.”

Vinnie Paul, however, had always maintained that Pantera was finished the day that his brother died.

"They call it a reunion for a reason,” Paul said. “It's called bringing the original members back to what it was.

"So there's a lot of these things that they call reunions that aren't really reunions. They've got one dude from the band floating around in them. That's not a true reunion. With Pantera, it'll never be possible.”

Paul added in a separate interview: "Without Dimebag Darrell, there is no reunion. And that's all there is to it.

“We were a very influential band, and we touched millions and millions of people with that band, but it's over.

“People really have to come to grips with that, and that's all there is to it.”

Tetrarch guitarist Diamond Rowe recently made history with the launch of her signature guitar - the first signature Jackson for a female player, and as the first artist model for a black female performing heavy metal for the industry as a whole.

Now she tells MusicRadar all about her evolution as a player, her formative influences and her approach to creating super-heavy tones.

Your band recently released a new song called Live Not Fantasize, which almost has a Rob Zombie kind of stomp to it…

“A lot of people have mentioned they can hear Rob Zombie in there. The main riff actually started out as a joke! I was at home, it was late, probably around one in the morning, and I was sat at my computer experiencing writer’s block. I started demoing the dumbest riffs, almost as if to go back to square one.

“And I remember thinking it had that four-on-the-floor beat, that Rob Zombie stomp type thing. We went into the studio with 20 songs and for some reason this one kept making the cut.”

Well, it’s funny how the music can guide you in ways like that…

“The working title for it was Ha Ha and because we couldn’t get rid of it, we kept adding things to it. The more we added in terms of electronics and other sounds, the more cool it started to sound cool. So it’s funny, this lead single started its life as a throwaway!”

There are some interesting effects and electronics, which adds to the industrial flavour…

“When I started to get a vision for the song, after we realised it wasn’t going away, I decided it would be cool to push the industrial element. We’d never really done that before, so that’s why the strong effects and electronics ended up being really prominent. My DigiTech Whammy is literally everywhere. Now when we all meet up, they ask me ‘So did you bring your Whammy?’ It seems I’m the Whammy girl now.”

You even use the Whammy to divebomb, almost like using a bar…

“I do! I’ve started to do that a lot. You’re right... good ear, man! Funnily enough, I tracked the solo to that song with a Jackson Soloist, so there was a bar on the guitar which I ended up using as well as the Whammy, making it all sound even crazier.”

There’s a tapping section in your solo. Where did you learn how to do that?

“I think that bit came from all the Metallica songs I learned as a teenager. They’re my all-time favourite band and I had all the tab books. I spent months jamming along really badly, trying to get better and better. After that my influences were all over the place.

“As a kid, I never discriminated over different types of metal – you know, you get people who only listen to hardcore or metalcore or whatever. I would listen to Korn, Disturbed, Nirvana, Linkin Park... anything heavy. It didn’t matter what kind of heavy. The tapping stuff came from Kirk Hammett and Dimebag Darrell. When we started thinking about what Tetrarch was going to sound like, we wanted a lot of that nu-metal vibe – big choruses and creepy melodies. But a lot of those bands didn’t have guitar solos.”

So that’s something you had to learn how to implement?

“Yeah, I made it my mission to fit solos into that kind of sound. I’m a lead player, that’s just what I love. I worked at bringing those shred techniques into our sound, while also using things like the Whammy to make it all sound weird and uncomfortable. But it’s the older generation like Zakk Wylde and Dimebag who taught me how to solo.”

What kind of amps are you using on the latest recordings? We noticed you were plugged into an EVH head for some of the Jackson promo footage...

“The new album was tracked with Neural DSP Gojira plug-in and then we reamped later through the EVH heads. What’s funny is that the reason we tried out EVH heads was also because of Gojira. I believe Joe Duplantier uses the Stealth and Christian Andreu has the EL34. We tried those exact amps because of how crushing Gojira sound live and it worked out great for us.”

Other than the Whammy, what kind of pedals would we find on your ‘board?

“We call my tone ‘The Freak Tone’ because it has the modulated, Korn-inspired kind of sound. We stumbled upon it years ago and were actually using Line 6 Pod Farm to obtain it. I think there was this sine-wave chorus that we couldn’t find anywhere else. Now Pod Farm is antiquated, apparently, so we use analogue pedals. I have a Dunlop Uni-Vibe, a Boss DD7 and a Boss Super Chorus, but all at the same time to create one effect.”

You mentioned there’s a new album on the way. What makes it different to 2021’s Unstable?

“On these new songs, we’ve really tried to write the biggest choruses we can. We’re really proud of that. Our influences were always gateway metal bands that anybody could listen to and enjoy. Obviously we make music for metal fans first and foremost, but we want everyone to enjoy listening to us.

“It’s the same as Enter Sandman – anyone can listen to that, even if they’re not a metalhead. This album has moments that are really catchy, some of my best lead work and some interesting electronics, like on the first single. Some of the songs are quite basic when you strip away the leads and textures, but that’s how we created so much character and personality. I sing on this record, too!”

That’s interesting! What do you sound like as a singer?

“I’ve done some backing vocals in the past, just for textural stuff. But this time round I’ve actually sung my own verses and sections. It came out really cool. Honestly, I don’t know how I sound!”

From a production standpoint, what’s the secret to the aggressive guitar tones you are best known for?

“Anything EQ-related is [singer/guitarist] Josh’s wheelhouse. He’s the audiophile in the band, along with our producer Dave Otero, who is a death metal guy. Dave has done Allegaeon, Cattle Decapitation and Fallujah... those types of records. We’re the softest band he’s worked with!

“So I think some of the aggression comes from how he mixes, that’s just what he’s used to. I think it’s cool because we don’t get mixed like other bands in our genre, and it makes us sound extra heavy. Josh and I are heavy right-hand pickers. We both hit our guitars hard. We don’t play super technical riffs, instead we write ones that bite and make you go ‘Hell yeah!’ We play really clean so you can hear all the intricacies. The heaviness is a mixture of different things.”

There’s something special about the chemistry between you and Josh. What’s the secret?

“Josh and I have been playing together since we were 12, so we’re very locked into each other. We grew up together as guitar players, so it’s a very natural chemistry. What I’m lacking, he picks up and vice versa. I’m a gain fanatic, you’d probably think ‘Oh my god’ if you saw how much I usually turn it up to. I will start at five and work my way up to seven! Josh is more moderate, on the other hand, and wouldn’t go that high. So that works out really cool.

“My tone is more saturated, his is more clean. I have the body and heaviness, he has the clarity. He uses the EVH Stealth and ESP pickups with the EMG 57/66 set, which is aggressive but more vintage-sounding than my 81/85. A lot of people have mentioned that it’s good to see EMGs in a signature again. And I realised that recently a lot of signatures have had Fishmans or Seymour Duncans or whatever. I always tell EMG ‘I’m your girl’ because they always sound great.”

If you could get a guitar lesson from any of your heroes, who would you choose?

“I’d choose Kirk and James from Metallica. I started playing guitar along to those guys, watching all their DVDs and documentaries. They were my teachers. I’d love to jam with them. I know so many of their songs, it would be fun to pick up some guitars and run through Master Of Puppets or One.

“That would be a full-circle moment for me. I’d also love to hang with them as human beings. Because it’s easy to see them as larger-than-life gods who are untouchable. It would be nice to hang out as normal people and just talk about music and life in general.”

What’s next for you as a player – how exactly do you hope to develop?

“That’s a good question. I always happen upon new things I want to try by accident. I never really set my mind to things. Because when I do that, I just crash and burn out. If I organically walk into something new, I will find it more interesting to explore. I’m definitely the kind of player who is song-focussed and looking to make even the most basic song sound interesting. I like to layer different leads and melodies on top of each other, a bit like how Korn do.

“I could sit in a room with pedals for hours, making up weird sounds and layering them over each other. Josh will come into the room and ask ‘Are you high or something?’ And I don’t even smoke, I just like getting lost in the music. My main ambition is to keep on getting better at writing songs and creating sounds, rather than learning new techniques and things like that.”

And do you ever absorb much from players outside of metal?

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to look at players from other genres and appreciate what they do. I was watching footage of John Mayer the other day and thought, ‘That dude’s a really freaking good guitar player!’ His stuff is so out of my wheelhouse but it did inspire me to sit down and mess around with that kind of sound. I think his chords and tones are awesome. But coming from a metal and hard rock background, I’ve never spent much time learning other styles. I’m all about Dime, Zakk and players like that!”

A classic interview with Pantera legend Dimebag Darrell is one of the highlights of the last-ever issue of Total Guitar, which goes on sale this week.

This final issue features excerpts from many other interviews from across the years with cover stars including Jimmy Page, Brian May, Noel Gallagher and Matt Bellamy. But for pure foul-mouthed entertainment, nothing can beat the conversation with a drunk Dimebag from the summer of 2004 - just a few months before the guitarist’s life was cut short.

At one point during this interview, Dime grabbed his new Washburn signature guitar and swung it at the head of TG writer Steve Allsworth. But even as the hangover from hell crept up on him, Dime remained lucid enough to discuss the magic of spontaneous creation.

“I’ve got to the point where I just don’t f*ckin’ practice,” he said. “If I feel it’s slacking, I’ll do a little work. But dude, I’ve been doing this my whole f*cking life! I don’t know all the f*ckin’ scales, but you know what? If I knew all the scales, I’d know what something was gonna sound like before I played it. And then there’d never be that experience of stepping out there and saying, ‘Let me see if I can make this solo fly! Can I get that last lick in there?’ And if you can turn a sour note into a good one just by bending it a half step, you can almost make it sound like it was meant to be!”

And at the end of that interview, the man who would be buried in a Kiss-branded coffin, with one of Eddie Van Halen’s guitars, had some sage advice for TG readers. “As far as guitar playing goes, go to the old school - Randy Rhoads, Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen - for the lead chops. And do what’s right for you.”

Total Guitar’s Editor Chris Bird comments: "For me, it has truly been a privilege to work with a frankly awesome team of contributors and colleagues, and to have been able to spend the last 17 years of my life creating lessons and features for you.”

But that’s not the last you will see or hear of him. Chris will go on to a new role as Lessons Editor on MusicRadar and our sister sites GuitarWorld and Guitar Player - serving up high quality tuition content for the guitar-playing community.

Looks like Dimebag Darrell’s weapons grade metal guitar tone is back on the menu as his Warhead signature amp has been resurrected by KHDK Electronics’ David Karon as a 40-watt lunchbox sized head.

The Warhead Mini-Amp might be all-new for 2024 but its solid-state DNA can be traced back to the guitar amp designs he developed with Karon at Randall. 

As Dimebag’s long-serving guitar tech, Grady Champion, says in the introduction video, they used some OG gear to dial in the sound of this amp. If you’re looking for a one-stop solution for crushing Pantera electric guitar tones, then this would be it – and at $529, it’s a relatively affordable amplifier.

While initial runs of the amp featuring the Dime-Slime metal grill and glow-in-the-dark logo have sold out (they only made 333 of them), you can pre-order the standard black edition, which is covered with black Tolex with snake-skin front, and signature details such as Dimebag’s signature in slime green above the 1/4” instrument input. The power light also illuminates green.

There’s no messing around with this. The control panel has everything you need, nothing you don’t You’ve got a single channel, controls for Master, Presence, Treble, Middle, Bass, and Gain. Feel free to keep the Middle to a minimum for that anti-social late ‘90s scooped tone. Absolutely crank it up. 

But as Champion revealed to MusicRadar in 2019, there was more than meets the eye when it came to nailing that scooped tone, with a pair of rackmountable Furman EQs doing a lot of heavy lifting in shaping his tone, and a Rocktron Guitar Silencer on hand to keep things tight.

“The frequencies in the Furman PQ-3 and PQ-4 that were cut, were boosted with the six-band, and vice-versa,” he said. “The EQs worked like a giant gain stage. I kept the gate tight. The Rocktron Guitar Silencer was the favourite here.”

And originally, the Randall Warhead was deployed onstage for Dimebag’s clean tone, replacing the Mesa-Boogie Mk IV tube amp that was used for the job, complementing five Randall Century 200s.

“That was the mainstay of the rig for some time,” said Champion. “When he did the Randall Warhead, we ended up just using it for clean stuff. We switched between using the PQ-3 and PQ-4, the PQ-4 getting most of the work. The Rocktron Guitar Silencer was the mainstay for the gate. An MXR Flanger/Doubler was used in the main ‘wet’ head loop 100 per cent of the time. We used two Whammy pedals (I had control of one), a wah, and also on the ‘wet’ head was a momentary reverb, switching dirty to clean with a Whirlwind A/B box.”

Champion described working on the refreshed Warhead was a “total labour of love”, and a project that also involved Dimebag’s partner, Rita Haney, and KHDK’s chief engineer Antonin Salva, undertaking several revisions until they settled on the final design, which was put through its paces during rehearsals for the Pantera reunion/tribute tour featuring Zakk Wylde on guitar.

“We used some of Dime’s OG gear of course to create this tiny little powerhouse,” he says. “Y’know, it’s like having a little piece of Dime everywhere.”

All in, the Warhead took two years to put together, and is described as “our homage to the man who has deeply touched all our hearts”.

Priced $529, the Warhead Mini-Amp is available now, and ships with a signed certificate of authenticity. See Warhead Amps for more details.

With the 20th anniversary of his death coming up in December, Dimebag Darrell is being honoured with a range of whiskey in his name.

The late guitar legend’s partner Rita Haney has set up a new brand called Blacktooth Beverages, which will feature a mixture of aged whiskey blends and pre-made alcoholic drinks that speak to “the rebellion, creativity and unifying nature” of the Pantera man. It’s being launched in a few weeks, on August 20 - what would have been Dimebag’s 58th birthday.

It’s fair to say Dimebag liked his whiskey – back in the '90s he invented his own Black Tooth Grin cocktail, which contains a double shot of Seagrams 7, a double shot of Crown Royal and a splash of coke on ice.

“Darrell always wanted his own whiskey, we talked about it a lot together,” Haney said in a statement. “I have handwritten notes and lists, with his ideas and drawings, Blacktooth was always part of those goals he wanted to reach. 

"Dime was always about unity, whether it be brought around through music or good cocktails. He loved to pour ‘em up and Watch It Go! He was always about a damn good time! I think this whiskey represents his essence very well.”

"Rita is truly honouring Dimebag's legacy in every sense with Blacktooth Beverages,” Blacktooth Director of Operations Brent Hamilton said. “I feel that fans will appreciate the time and effort she has spent developing an authentic ‘Blacktooth’ taste profile. The initial response has been beyond exciting. I’m honoured to be a part of Blacktooth and to be able to finally share it with the fans."

It’s nearly two decades when the metal musician’s life was brought to a premature end when a crazed fan shot him on stage in Columbus, Ohio. But he hasn’t been forgotten. Since 2010 there has been an annual Dimebash concert in honour of his memory which has seen musicians as varied as Dave Grohl, Tom Morello and Serj Tankian pay tribute to the man and he has been a consistent presence whenever there have been lists of All Time Great Guitarists or All Time Metal Guitarists. His signature Warhead amp is set to be reissued soon, although no release date has been confirmed yet.

In the meantime, his memory can be toasted the way he would have appreciated. For more details on the Blacktooth range go over to their website here.