Reba Meyers plays guitar and sings in Code Orange. The band recently released the single "Only One Way" and is out on the road supporting its acclaimed 2017 LP Forever.
When I was growing up, Pantera was not one of my favorite bands, by any means. I knew about them, but I was not a metalhead. I was more of a punk kid, so I hated Pantera and anything like that. I didn't really know. You look at that stuff as a kid, and you think, "Oh, this is that popular mainstream metal shit — I fucking hate that shit." I didn't actually know that. I just didn't have any good friends who listened to metal (otherwise I'd have gone down that road). But as a kid, I wanted to reject all this metal stuff because I was the "punk kid." I felt the same way about Nirvana. It was stupid.
Then, four or five years later, when Code Orange was doing more stuff, I started getting into different kinds of music, including metal and Pantera. I realized that I was just an idiot. What had I been waiting on? Maybe it was because of the generational disconnect that I took so long, since the kids before us had discovered the band back in the Nineties. I mean, I'm 23. I was just a little kid when it came out, and by the time I got into them, they were more or less over. So that's why I wasn't really into it as a kid. I always looked at Pantera like, "That's over. Everybody knows about them. I wanna be the one to discover new stuff."
That all changed the first time I really heard Pantera. If I remember right, I was sitting in the van with Dom [Palmero, Code Orange guitarist], who grew up on metal — I think he put on "Floods." I was like, "Holy shit, this is actually really good! I've been tricked for all these years!" — which pretty much always happens. So I went back and listened to the rest of their stuff. I was really taken aback by how talented they were. They're a legendary band and have so many amazing albums. I'd say Far Beyond Driven's one of the best. It's one of the most aggressive, consistent albums Pantera ever put out.
Pantera are flashy in a way that I love and hate at the same time, which is why I think they're great. Some songs on Far Beyond Driven, like "Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills," sound almost goofy to the point they make me mad. Other songs, like the Sabbath cover ["Planet Caravan"] make it clear that the band can just do whatever they want and make it cool. There's kind of a bro thing attached to Pantera, for sure, but that's just how it is — and it's not necessarily a bad thing, either. If you're able to attach to that specific crowd, and make that crowd get into that type of music, then you've done something fucking amazing — that's pretty hard to do.
That's why Code Orange links itself to these kinds of bands. There really weren't that many bands who had that confidence, that self-power. They always did their thing and didn't give a fuck about anyone else. They wanted to say "Fuck You" to the world, and that's what metal should be. The music has so much longevity because it's what they wanted to do — and that's hard to pull off when other people think they know better than you. Now that I'm in a band myself and have seen firsthand how the industry works, I identify with Far Beyond Driven even more. When someone tries to pressure you into being who they say you are, you get pissed!
Pantera's music has so much fucking raw anger in it, but the range of emotions on Far Beyond Driven is much deeper than that. If a band's just straight-up angry all the time, it's probably going to get boring, but here, Pantera keep it moody and dynamic and also relatable. They explore the holes between the drums and guitars, and really take you on a journey. Plus, every fucking second there's a goddamn riff. Everything has its place. (I don't have a favorite song, but I'm partial to "Strength Beyond Strength" and "Throes of Rejection.")
Here's the thing. I really don't even think that the reason Pantera were so good was simply because they were great musicians who knew how to play their instruments. It's that they had style, and they understood music in a way that other bands didn't. You can look at Far Beyond Driven as a weird little puzzle. It just grooves, and Pantera were playing what they felt, and it came together naturally in the end. At the same time, they used their flashiness and their technical abilities to do stuff that nobody else was doing. Nobody could ever beat Dimebag. There's not gonna be another Dimebag. It's impossible.
In conclusion, if I could go back in time and talk about Pantera with 14-year-old Reba, I'd tell her the following: "You're fucking stupid. Take this fucking CD, and listen to it, and get better at guitar now, because you're going to wish that you'd studied this shit earlier on."
