Pantera – Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits

Remember when bands used to just break up and go away? Not anymore my friend, thanks to the Internet. Now every time a band breaks up the band members end up running to the internet, running their mouths and looking like high school girls in the back locker room. “Oh my GOD did you hear what Phil said?” “Dimebag is like TOTALLY wasting his time with Pantera.” “Is Pantera still together? Please check yes or no.”

Pantera, for all intents and purposes, is dead. And as we all know, the split-second a band is dead it’s time for the record label to rush out a greatest hits package to capitalize on the free publicity. And so, without even enough time for the corpse to get cool, Elektra presents to you one of the dumbest named albums ever, Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits.

“While fans of the band have already heard this material, it’s a good compilation for those who want to get into the band.” I used that line in my Alice in Chains greatest hits review, I used it in my Nirvana greatest hits review, and instead of coming up with some big witty review, I’ll use it again here.

With a sixteen song album covering five studio albums and several soundtrack singles, Pantera does a decent job of covering most (but not all) of the bases here. Cowboys From Hell is represented by only two songs, for example — the title track, and “Cemetary Gates”, with “Domination” and “Psycho Holiday” conspicuously missing. Likewise, “Mouth for War”, “Walk”, and “This Love” make it to the disc via Vulgar Display of Power, but “Fucking Hostile”, the band’s theme song, didn’t make the cut. And so on and so forth. A couple of cover tunes (“Cat Scratch Fever”, “Hole In The Sky”) and a couple of soundtrack tracks round out the lineup.

Following Metallica’s trend, the Pantera greatest hits cd comes with a DVD, containing 10 Pantera videos. The good news is, hey, it’s a free DVD with 10 music videos on it. The bad news is all of these except one appear on Pantera’s 3 Vulgar Videos From Hell DVD, which also contains the video for “Planet Caravan” (not found here).

If you already own all the Pantera albums and the DVDs, move along. There’s nothing new to see here. If you’re looking for a Pantera best of CD and DON’T have a DVD player, I’d go with Pantera: 101 Live over this. If you’re a Pantera fan who doesn’t have the DVDs and is a completest, this is the disc for you.

Tracklist:
01. Cowboys From Hell
02. Cemetery Gates
03. Mouth For War
04. Walk
05. This Love
06. I’m Broken
07. Becoming
08. 5 Minutes Alone
09. Planet Caravan
10. Drag The Waters
11. Where You Come From (Live)
12. Cat Scratch Fever
13. Revolution Is My Name
14. I’ll Cast A Shadow
15. Goddamn Electric
16. Hole In The Sky

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