Rebel Meets Rebel

by Steve LeggettRebel Meets Rebel is essentially maverick country songwriter and singer David Allan Coe fronting Pantera's rhythm section (drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, bassist Rex Brown, and guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott) in a hyper-charged county/metal/hard rock/blues hybrid style that resulted in the release of a one-off album, Rebel Meets Rebel, on Vinnie's Big Vin Records imprint in 2006. Coe had met Darrell at the close of the 1990s in Fort Worth, and the two self-described rebels were struck by the similarity in their approaches to their respective musical genres, and they vowed to work together in the studio. Recording for Rebel Meets Rebel took place in spurts between 1999 and 2003 with Vinnie producing. Meanwhile, the two Abbott brothers had formed a new band, Damageplan, and while the band was touring in Ohio in 2004, Darrell was shot and killed on-stage, making the Rebel Meets Rebel album somewhat of an unintentional goodbye statement. Coe wrote all the lyrics for the project with Vinnie and Darrell coming up with the musical arrangements, and the end result is less a fusion of metal and country than an all-out collision of the two, which is undoubtedly what Dimebag would have wanted.