A PANTERA REMIX = SACRILEGE? NAH.

MS Maniac Adrien Arnoux sent us an “outraged” email about the French remix outfit Hello, Atomic (actually just one dude) whose latest jawn “We Will Brokeback Mountain Yo’ Ass” is a mash-up of the main riff from Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” with vocal samples from Queen’s “We Will Rock” over the choruses and The Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic” over the verses. It’d be awfully easy to be dismissive and hateful towards a remixer for butchering/stealing/raping/pillaging a sacred Pantera riff… but no, this shit is awesome. I support. And it turns out that Mr. Arnoux is the man behind the plan himself; nice work, dude!

For one, it’s well done; this isn’t some hack sloppily cutting and pasting together beats in GarageBand. On account of that, if this remix inspires just one kid to say, “That riff is pretty cool. What is it? Pantera? I’ll have to check them out,” and then that kid subsequently falls in love with Pantera… it’s all worth any supposed desecration this remix could’ve caused. I also happen to like the other two songs he mashed up with the Pantera riff; I’ve got mad love for Queen and mad love for NYC’s original Jew Yorker rappers The Beastie Boys.

Hello, Atomic also have a Refused vs. Gwen Stefani track on their MySpace page. +1. FTW. A+. etc.

-VN