You don’t mess with Texas, but we sure fuck with their music scene.
From Dallas, to Houston, to Austin, to El Paso and everywhere in between, it’s fair to say that big things happen in the U.S.’ second most populous state. And, indeed, the past several decades have offered heavy-music fans plenty of all-timer efforts from the worlds of rock, revolutionary groove-metal, hardcore, thrash rebirth, OSDM and so much more.
So, we asked Revolver readers to point out the acts they throw their longhorns up for on the daily, and they responded accordingly.
Kublai Khan TX
The inclusion of Kublai Khan TX as one of Texas’ finest would seem to be given — after all, the long-running outfit proudly bear their home state’s abbreviation in their band name, and have alluded to their surroundings in songs like “The Mountain of Corsicana.”
The band have long flexed a brutal, bare-knuckled approach to modern metalcore, while vocalist Matt Honeycutt often sounds like he’s forcefully bench-pressing the weight of the world off his chest. Their exhibitions of prowess have made fans of many, and led to co-signs and collabs with metal world royalty like Lamb of God, which is a running theme in here.
Power Trip
Formed in 2008, the Dallas quintet first made a name for themselves with a vicious mix of tough-as-nails hardcore and anthemic, arena-conquering thrash — indeed, Nightmare Logic hit “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)” became a live staple, and even got blasted at Dallas Stars games
Praised by old guard icons like Anthrax, tourmates of Lamb of God, and smack dab at the forefront of a Texas metal uprising, Power Trip were poised to crossover into the next level of metaldom before frontman Riley Gale passed away in 2020.
The surviving members began playing again in 2023 with Skourge and Fugitive vocalist Seth Gilmore on the mic. A long-teased, in-the-works LP remains extremely anticipated.
At the Drive-In
While named after a Poison lyric, El Paso, Texas’ At the Drive-In specialized in a raw, decidedly un-glammy brand of post-hardcore. And it made them — at least eventually —god damned legends.
Formed in ’94, the group combined Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s helium-powered and poetically prismatic lyricism with bull-in-a-china-shop riff pugilism, emo sincerity and a punk-as-fuck spirit. At their height, while supporting 2000’s Relationship of Command, they rode a razor’s edge on-stage — sometimes nailing “One Armed Scissor” as Bixler-Zavala heroically leaped off speakers, other times devolving into a chaos-spiral of out-of-tune cacophony.
Bonus shout-out to Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez’s multi-decade run with their more prog-explosive, interstellar jam band the Mars Volta, who likewise yielded a lot of fan votes this week.
ZZ Top
As one majorly up-voted commentor in our Instagram post put it: “Pantera would say ZZ Top.”
Indeed, you don’t have to pull off your cheap sunglasses to see the writing on the wall: ZZ Top’s music is as iconic as Billy Gibbons’ big-ass beard, and the group’s patented Texas boogie has inspired countless of bands across countless genres — including some of the world’s heaviest.
A sleek, confident strut kicks though classic rockers like “La Grange” and “Tush,” while the band memorably kicked their career into overdrive with their synth-slicked Eighties era anthems. All these years later, those hits still have legs.
That said, Revolver readers didn’t give Top all their loving, as there’s another Texan outfit that refused to be eliminated from the top spot…
Pantera
A lesson we’ve learned in life? Never underestimate the power of Pantera’s fans — this including lifelong friend and Crowbar/Down rifflord Kirk Windstein, fellow DFW veterans Drowning Pool and Pantera videographer Bobby Tongs, who all hopped into the comments to throw their unending support behind the Cowboys From Hell, along with countless others.
After spending the Eighties flirting with rock, glam and a dash of Power Metal, Pantera’s classic lineup forged a uniquely grooving, super-scooped brand of heaviness that impressed headbangers far beyond state borders, brought metal extremity to the mainstream, and gifted listeners with some of the greatest riffs of all time — courtesy of the late Dimebag Darrell.
A lot of you seemed positively dumbfounded at the suggestion that anyone but Pantera could be considered the greatest Texans of all time, because their sound remains eternally goddamn electric.