How About That Thing?

Damageplan was a short-lived groove metal band from the early 2000s that I absolutely adored. While technically, my undying loyalty and devotion still belonged to Cradle of Filth at that point, Damageplan was a shiny new thing that had seemingly unlimited potential. At least, that was the case before December of that year… But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The lineup of Damageplan consisted of vocalist Pat Lachman of Halford, Daryl and Vinnie Paul Abbott from Pantera, and Bob Zilla of that tattoo shop down the block from Vinnie and Daryl’s house. In the recording of their first album, the bass player was Shawn Matthews, formerly the guitarist for Jerry Cantrell’s pretty forgettable solo career. However, once it came time to tour, he apparently got replaced. I’m still not entirely sure why.

I wasn’t really in to Halford all that much back then, nor was I particularly interested in Jerry Cantrell’s solo career outside of “Anger Rising”, but Pantera? Fuhget about it! Pantera were legends in the making, and it was a bummer they went their separate ways after “Reinventing the Steel”.

When it comes to the sound of Damageplan… Well, this is where I have to admit that I’ve never been that great at writing about music. But I’ll definitely give it a try.

The sound of Damageplan was described at one point as being very “Pantera esque”. Considering ol’ Dime Bag Daryl was the guitarist, it’s not hard to see where that comparison came from. Daryl always had a very distinct style of guitar that was never truly duplicated. Pat Lachman was a man who could either sing beautifully, or scream at you about this or that, and just about everything in between. Bob Zilla… Also contributed, I guess. To put it bluntly, these dudes were heavy, they were groovy, and they weren’t about to take it easy on your ears any time soon.

They released their debut, and only album in February of 2004. A little diddy by the name of “New Found Power”.

Upon release, I remember it getting some pretty mixed reviews. Sure, they say the reception was pretty positive NOW, but almost twenty years ago, I remember things being a lot more polarized. Although some of it had nothing to do with the product put out, and more to do with people taking Anselmo’s side on the Pantera breakup… But that probably had more to do with the people I was hanging out with in 2004 than the fanbase at large.

Either way, the general impression I got was that you either loved these guys, or you hated them. No middle ground to speak of.

It probably wouldn’t be particularly unfair to call these guys a one-hit-wonder. However, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure which of their singles was the one hit. It was either “Save Me”, which received extensive radio play, or “Breathing new Life”, which received extensive play on music video channels of the time. MTV2’s revival of “Headbanger’s Ball”, FUSEtv having it on late at night with the rest of the metal videos, and those are the ones I know of off the top of my head.

Regardless of which song was the bigger hit, it was pretty clear that Damageplan was here to stay. And I was all for it. I may not have followed Pantera as fanatically as I should’ve back in the day, but I was definitely going to follow these guys for years to come.

Then December happened. And sadly, Daryl Abbott was shot to death on stage by a lunatic. I refuse to publish his name. Partly because I forgot what it was, but primarily, without going too far into a rant, because that’s exactly what people like that WANT the media to do: plaster their name and their face all over this incident or that incident, so their legacy will live on forever. You probably laugh at this notion, but keep in mind, Netflix put out a Jeffrey Dahmer docuseries, and we suddenly had people trick-or-treating as the fucker and writing fan fiction about him. Make of that what you will, it’ still more fame than that sick fuck deserves. And publishing the name of any killer, and plastering their photo on every screen is just as bad, in my opinion. So I’m doing my part, and redacting the killer’s name. Because they don’t deserve to be remembered.

Getting back on track, the death of Daryl Abbott was ultimately what led to the end of Damageplan. Vinnie Paul had mentioned in interviews that there had been other tracks they recorded before they split up, but they were unfinished, and if they were to be released today, they’d basically be instrumentals. Just in case it wasn’t already obvious, those tracks still haven’t seen the light of day.

Vinnie Paul Abbott and Bob Zilla would move on to play for HELLYEAH: another supergroup featuring the vocalist of Mudvayne, and former members of Nothingface as well. HELLYEAH is also responsible for some of the worst songs I’d heard in 2007-2009’s rock scene. “Alcohaulin’ ass”, and “Hellof a Time”, just to name a few. Admittedly, “Blood for Blood” was pretty good, but by that time, I’d pretty much given up possibility of liking these guys longterm.

Phil Anselmo and Vinnie Paul would apparently feud for a while, following an interview Anselmo did with Metal Hammer where in he insisted Daryl deserved to get his ass beaten severely. Anselmo insisted it was a joke… Then again, he also insisted that throwing up the zich heil and shouting “WHITE POWER!” on stage was also a joke, and… Whew boy. It was quite a while ago, but it was during what was probably one of the worst years to be doing such a thing, considering who was president at the time.

I’m not really sure what happened to Lachman. I heard tale he was initially part of the Alice in Chains reunion in the early stages, but quickly dropped out, or got fired, or something. Either way, I hate to say it, but I kinda lost track of that guy.

It was a real tragedy what happened to Damageplan. Maybe you loved “New Found Power” like I did, or maybe you hated it. Even as someone who loved the album, I have to admit, it was definitely an album that sounded like a band who was still figuring out where they wanted to go. They had loud and screamy songs, and they had somewhat softer and more melodic songs. They had themes of collapsing empires and new found power, and they had songs that were basically just Lachman screaming “FUCK YOU!” at the top of his lungs. And, because it was a metal album from the nu-metal era, the final track was an acoustic guitar song.

Perhaps in an alternate timeline, Dimebag Daryl didn’t get murdered on stage, and the band persisted onward to this very day. Perhaps they’d find their groove on their second album.

Or hell, maybe they’d flop horribly, and the Abbott Brothers would join up with the rest of the bands who decided on reunion tours during the late-2000s-early-2010s. It’s hard to say.

All I can say for sure is, in my opinion, Damageplan deserved better. The fact they ended the way they did was a real shame. The news of Daryl’s passing was another turd in the shit sundae life decided to feed me in the second half of 2004, what with the whole repeating Twelfth grade thing, and the whole getting dumped by my girlfriend at the time thing, and the whole John Kerry somehow managing to lose the 2004 election thing already being pretty prominent.

If you’ve never heard Damageplan before, and you have a tolerance for the loud and the heavy, I definitely recommend the album. True, some songs are definitely better than others, but the good outweighs the bad quite a bit, in my opinion.