Album Review: Pantera - Cowboys From Hell 20th Anniversary

Pantera
Cowboys From Hell 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
4.5/5

Listen To: Domination (Alive and Hostile EP)
Skip It: Nothing.

For any old school metalhead, Pantera's mainstream breakthrough, Cowboys From Hell, has some sort of nostalgia tied to it. Upon its release in 1990 Pantera, who had previously been known as Pantera's Metal Magic and strut to a glammier kind of metal, received mass recognition for their reworked sound. Without getting into the politics of who started what first - Cowboys From Hell is deemed by most as the definitive groove metal album, though condemned by defenders of Exhorder as not - we can agree that Cowboys From Hell popularized the genre, a first, and that's nothing to shake your prick at.

Celebrating the twenty year anniversary since this influential album, legendary Rhino Records re-released it in a box set alongside an array of previously unreleased Pantera material.

The original Cowboys From Hell leaves well enough alone, letting you relive past mullet days by head banging along to "Cemetary Gates," "Psycho Holiday," "Domination" and the rest of the twelve monstrous tracks that thrust Pantera onto pick-up truck dashboards across America. Dimebag, Anselmo, Rex and Vinnie are all still indefinitely in your face. What still resonates most is Dimebag's incurable talent - the punchiest death metal sound funneled through groundbreaking orchestrated technique.

The second disc, available on the Rhino Extended release, is all live Pantera. Seven tracks, recorded at the Foundations Forum set in LA in 1990, are previously unreleased. The latter five tracks come from 1994's Alive and Hostile EP.

For diehards who splurge on the Deluxe Edition, there is a third disc featuring the eleven legendary demos that became Cowboys From Hell, and one previously unheard Pantera tune entitled "The Will To Survive," a hairier track more like pre-Cowboys Pantera.

Shit, now that's more than an afternoon's worth of music. More like twenty years' worth.

Track Listing:

Disc One
1. Cowboys From Hell
2. Primal Concrete Sledge
3. Psycho Holiday
4. Heresy
5. Cemetery Gates
6. Domination
7. Shattered
8. Clash With Reality
9. Medicine Man
10. Message In Blood
11. The Sleep
12. The Art Of Shredding

Disc Two
1. Domination – Live
2. Psycho Holiday – Live
3. The Art Of Shredding – Live
4. Cowboys From Hell – Live
5. Cemetery Gates – Live
6. Primal Concrete Sledge – Live
7. Heresy – Live
8. Domination – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
9. Primal Concrete Sledge – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
10. Cowboys From Hell – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
11. Heresy – Live, Alive And Hostile EP
12. Psycho Holiday – Live, Alive And Hostile EP

Disc Three
1. The Will To Survive
2. Shattered – Demo
3. Cowboys From Hell – Demo
4. Heresy – Demo
5. Cemetery Gates – Demo
6. Psycho Holiday – Demo
7. Medicine Man – Demo
8. Message In Blood – Demo
9. Domination – Demo
10. The Sleep – Demo
11. The Art Of Shredding – Demo

Published by Tangible Sounds