Hellyeah might be the perfect name for a band with no interest in subtlety. It’s a band that blasts out songs with readymade stripper-anthem titles like “Alcohaulin’ Ass” and “Pole Rider” and boasts a Southern-fried approach to metal and a hard-partying, shot-downing, barbecue-devouring attitude driven by drummer Vinnie Paul.
Even the recording of the band’s sophomore album “Stampede,” which came out in July, was a family-style celebration.
“We made it at my house in Dallas,” a jovial Paul tells the Weekender. “I kind of turned my house into a recording studio, we turned a bedroom into a control room. We’d get up around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, barbecue, do some drinking and do some jamming. It gave it cohesiveness.”
Paul, who was Pantera’s drummer, is joined in Hellyeah by some other all-star heavy rockers: Mudvayne’s Chad Gray (vocals) and Greg Tribbett (guitar), Nothingface’s Tom Maxwell (guitar) and bassist Bob Zilla from Damageplan, Paul’s post-Pantera band with his late brother Dimebag Darrell. The band will play on the Jagermeister Stage Friday when the Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival comes to Scranton.
“I know every band on it,” Paul says. “Hellyeah is notorious for throwing barbecues (on tour). I love (main-stage band) Halestorm; Lzzy (Hale) is an amazing singer. We’re friends and fans.”
The drummer says his show-day routine hasn’t changed since his early days as a young touring musician.
“It really hasn’t, dude,” he says. “I’m still a big kid at heart. I don’t have a family. I’m not married, I don’t have any kids. … I dedicated myself to rock ’n’ roll.”
So, he throws back a few shots and hits the stage, he says.
It’s a hardy disposition for a man whose life, let alone career, was shattered six years ago when his brother Dimebag was shot dead on stage at a Damageplan show in Columbus, Ohio. Paul decided then that he was done with playing music.
“After it happened, it was an incredibly dark, sad time in my life,” says Paul, who formed Pantera with Dimebag back in 1981. “Disturbed were the first guys to ever step up to the plate; They decided to do a tribute to my brother. They invited me to come up and do a couple of songs, and I felt that rush again.”
The guys in Disturbed — Uproar’s headlining act — had to try hard to get Paul to come out of his brief retirement, though. And it was another musician who had gone through a similar tragedy that helped convinced him to do it.
“Eight months after (Dimebag’s death), I got a letter from Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters,” says Paul. “He said that with Kurt (Cobain), he went through the same thing, and that music was what healed him. He was 100 percent right. (Disturbed’s members) were pretty persistent about it. Eventually, I said, ‘Ya know what, I gotta do this.’”
With Pantera, Paul earned a reputation as a drummer with serious chops, working aggressive double-bass runs into his playing. His cited influences all fall into the hard-rock and metal categories, but with a lot of diversity among them.
“Peter Criss is the one that made me want to play drums,” Paul says of Kiss’ original drummer. “When I got ‘Kiss Alive’ and I heard it. … Look, anybody can air drum to Kiss songs. But it just blew me away.”
Rush’s Neil Peart — “that’s a very technical drummer,” Paul says — inspired him to add “tons of drums” to his kit at the time. And the playing of Tommy Aldridge (Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, Pat Travers Band, Black Oak Arkansas), turned him on to double-bass drum licks.
“First time I ever heard of him was ‘Boom Boom (Out Go The Lights),’” says Paul, referring to a track from Travers’ 1979 Top 40-charting “Live! Go for What You Know.” “‘That’s what I want to do. I want to double kick. I like the thunder it brings.’”
For a hard-rock album released in 2010, “Stampede” has a raw, direct feel. That, Paul says, is by design.
“There’s too much of that,” he says, speaking about perfect-sounding, seemingly robotic drums in modern heavy music. “One thing I’m really proud of with the Hellyeah records is we didn’t cut it to a click track. That’s perfect in a perfect world, but it takes all the life out of it. It’s gotta have that human feel to it.”
Recording in a more live-in-the-studio format meant a learning curve for some of his Hellyeah mates, Paul shares. “A lot of these guys have worked with (click tracks), and it was kind of new,” he says.
Fans sitting out Hellyeah because they’re waiting for a Pantera reunion should stop waiting. Paul has previously said he would never again play as Pantera, and he is asked here if that’s still the case.
“Hell yeah,” says Paul. “Dime was one of the biggest parts of the band. (For example), he designed all the T-shirts. The band’s legacy will be defined by what he did. I don’t want it ever being touched.
“He gave everything.”
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