08WALK PANTERA

THE WALK RIFF, AS SIMPLE AS IT SOUNDS, COULD EASILY BE ONE OF METAL’S MOST MISCONSTRUED...

(1992)

The riff that ushered in a bold new era for metal

Pantera were soundchecking on the Cowboys From Hell tour when guitarist Dimebag Darrell started playing what would soon become the most definitive track of their career. His brother Vinnie Paul quickly joined in on drums, later recalling how it had a shuffle rhythm unlike anything they’d written up to that point and nodded back to the siblings’ Southern roots, growing up around the music of ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd 50 kilometres south of Dallas. It was ultimately less thrashy and saw their band embracing more groove-driven doctrines of heaviness – inspiring a whole new wave of sonic aggression. The riff, as simple as it sounds, could easily be one of metal’s most misconstrued, often incorrectly tabbed without those crucial first fret bends. And though it doesn’t sound hugely wrong when played ‘straight’, there’s a certain magic to how Dimebag wrote it – the slurred increases and decreases in pitch giving the music an almost rubbery and mechanical kind of feel. The descending diads that get thrown in as the idea evolves bring further discordance, rooted around harsher-sounding intervals like the minor sixth and

tritone, before concluding with some faster palm-muted chugging on the lower frets. At this stage in his career, the guitarist was mainly playing his 1981 Dean ML, instantly recognisable for its lightning bolt paint job and Kiss stickers on the upper fin, and equipped with a high-output Bill Lawrence L 500 XL pickup in the bridge. Dubbed the ‘Dean From Hell’, he’d actually won the instrument in a guitar contest as a 16 year-old before selling it “to raise money for some wheels” and was later gifted the same ML back, customised with a new custom paint job, Floyd Rose tremolo system and ceramic bridge pickup. The instrument can be seen in the Walk video, as well as a brown tobacco-burst ML that was also in the studio for the Vulgar Display Of Power sessions. In place of the Randall RG100H heard on Cowboys From Hell, and brought back later on 1996’s

The Great Southern Trendkill, Dimebag was plugged into a Randall Century 200 head – again achieving his own signature sound by cranking the gain and scooping the mids on a solid-state amp, rather than anything valve-driven. Solid-state felt more in your face, he once reasoned, noting how his Randalls had no shortage of warmth but also

“the chunk and the f*ckin’ grind”.