Review: Pantera

Pantera
“Far Beyond The Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits”
(Elektra / Rhino)

To squeeze every last dime out of you fans, their label decided to release a “Best Of”.  While the cover art looks like a 4th grader learning Photoshop, the tunes selected are… fairly good.  All the “singles” (if Pantera ever had singles) are covered.  “Cowboys from Hell”, “Cemetery Gates”, “Mouth for War”, “Walk”, and “This Love” are literally the first five songs.  I wonder who picked these songs, as at least two of remaining tracks are covers.  Cool and all, but when releasing a greatest hits album, covering 5 full length albums, and you are given a total of 16 songs, why waste two on covers?

And can you believe “Fucking Hostile” is NOT on this disk.  Not even on the bonus DVD that gives you a bunch of videos for some of the songs on the music disk (and included “Primal Concrete Sledge” live, glad that song made it on here somewhere, and here is where they should have put “Planet Caravan” since the video for that was rad, but the geniuses who put this together decided to make that song one of their “hits” on the music CD).

But seriously, I can’t entirely recommend a Pantera “Greatest Hits”, that has TWO CDs, and doesn’t include “Fucking Hostile”.  That makes me feel Fucking Hostile.  But since you get all the videos, and probably a song or two from those last couple of Pantera CDs you probably didn’t buy, it’s worthy enough.  Still can’t believe they didn’t include “Fucking Hostile.”  I’ve seen Pantera six or seven times, and they never forgot to play that.  Someone should be slapped like a bitch.