Walk

I'm having a hard time thinking of a good introduction here so let's just lay out the cards on the table here as simply and bluntly as possible. This sucks, like this is really quite awful. I won't lie, I didnt come here thinking I'd enjoy it, I hate Walk, it has an annoying riff, a grating guitar tone, Phil sounds like a parrot when he sings "what do you say", its stripped down midpaced drum approach is boring and the whole song goes nowhere nor has any sense of direction at all.

I knew full well I was going to hate this EP, but I did not think I'd hate it THIS MUCH. For Walk itself just take the previous description but add that the guitar now not only has scooped mids but sounds hollow as well, Phil's vocals were put through a filter seeming to be processed with no intent except to sound processed, there was a pointless air siren on the intro, a gunshot sample at the beginning of the chorus and the siren sound comes back in and then they dragged out the ending. That list of changes is painting it in a positive light because it would be just as accurate and more concise if I said that they screwed up the audio and then added some edgy sound effects. The extended version might be even worse, adding over a minute of siren noises and Phil repeating the word walk way too many times.

The Walk remix was a Cervical Mix, the next two are the Biomechanical mixes which seem to be almost 20 years newer thanks to rerelease shenanigans, hell I'm basically listening to a whole different EP once track lists are compared. Unfortunately like the 90s mix for Walk they just screwed the audio again, then scooped entire song sections, this can be testified as By Demons Be Driven lost about 24 seconds of run time despite these remixes then replacing the scooped sections with new sections. By Demons Be Driven as mentioned lost 24 seconds of total runtime in this remix however it has this opening with a distorted voice saying "demon" over and over again on top of a double pedal drum roll that lasts 55 seconds. Add the lost 24 seconds to the 55 second intro and you've lost over 1:15 seconds of actual Pantera material before accounting for the rest of the track. Fucking Hostile on the other hand went from like 2:40ish to just shy of a 4 minute mark just from them adding a screechy intro simar to the one they gave by Demons Be Driven and rehashing it mid song.

Finally though, after sitting through 4 of those damn remixes and then going through them again to make sure my descriptions are accurate I wind up at the live tracks, the end is finally in sight. Sound quality for these is pretty good, they sound a lot like they do on the album, some sporadic leads are tossed in a few places adding to the lengths of both and Phil has quite a few snips of dialogue to fire up the crowd. The fact this material is drawn from Cowboys From Hell is an upside since its the better of the two albums they could have used (Glamtera days excluded).

I would like to take a second to say this is clearly not a single but an EP. Then I would like to say even a Pantera fan would probably have an issue deciding to spend money on this.

It starts with a 'cervical edit' of Walk. There is an odd sound to the guitar, I believe it is a production thing. It takes away from the guitar's edge. The vocals sound distorted and have effects thrown into them, this takes away from the performance.

Maybe you've heard the original version of Walk, it has a slow groove that doesn't drive anything, it has power but doesn't do anything. The solo is weak. The vocals are that of a guy trying to show he's a big tough man. Original song was boring but now the guitar power is gone and the vocals sound way too distorted. They took a song that was boring and made it into a song that is not passable.

The next two tracks are like that too, Fucking Hostile and By Demons Be Driven. Well these two have the added defect of having ending that are way too drawn out. They could have ended 10 maybe even 20 seconds earlier, but didn't and put me to sleep, not even exaggerating.

Then there is a remix of Walk, that was worthy of like a 10%. A ten for managing to put something together that was at least structured, but it gains no credit for anything beyond that. Throws the production into places where they shouldn't go. Puts the song out of order jumbling up the parts and making the lyrics sound like nonsense while adding in some annoying siren sounding electronics and effects. Also adds in some really boring, simplistic and repetitive instrumental breaks that last like a minute.

This is finished off by some live tracks. The original songs were boring and the live versions didn't change my opinions of that. The band definitely put their energy into it but that doesn't mean its better then it is in studio. Phil sounds strained frequently through out Cowboys From Hell, I'm not sure if this is his voice going out, maybe he relies on studio too much or maybe this was just an off day for him (after bands go on stage whether their vocalist is in proper condition or not, but I imagine if this was it they would have chosen different recordings). Some of the screeches on the guitars sound literally like screeching as in two pieces of metal being scraped together, its not a good sound.