Rhino Records, that label I love to hate because they keep reaping the benefits of nostalgia by releasing expensive, retrospective box sets of, like, every genre you could think of, has released the self-explanatory Heavy Metal Box. I haven’t heard it, and probably won’t, but over at PopMatters.com Adrien Begrand has written a looooong essay, its comprehensiveness mirroring that of Rhino’s collection, critiquing the set and noting the omissions and high points of the selections included.

Our local boys Pantera get a specifically nice shout-out from Begrand when he gets to his discussion of Disc Four. “The set ends on an especially strong note:,” he says. “In 1989, Dallas’s Pantera ditched the hairspray in favor of emphasizing the huge guitar sound of 'Diamond' (soon to be ‘Dimebag’) Darrell Abbott, and shocked the metal world with the psychotic boogie of ‘Cowboys From Hell.’” -- Jonanna Widner

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