Pantera will forever be identified with the stomping, middle-finger-flying, chant-along anthem “Walk.” The Vulgar Display of Power single is a bona fide metal classic now, and it was a big song in its day, too — big enough to be released not only on the 1992 album but also across a series of 1993 EPs alongside live B-sides and industrial remixes.
One of those EPs, titled Walk Biomechanical, featured a pair of gnarly, grinding remixes of two Vulgar cuts, “Fucking Hostile” and “By Demons Be Driven,” by Godflesh main man Justin K. Broadrick, then fresh off the release of his band’s second album Pure. We recently caught with Broadrick and we had to ask him about his experience reimagining songs by the mighty Pantera.
WHO HOOKED YOU UP WITH PANTERA?
JUSTIN K. BROADRICK The guy who was representing Pantera at their label over in the U.K. Remixes were very “current” at the time, and I think the label were searching for “industrial/dance” remixes or whatever was popular at the time …
WERE YOU EXCITED ABOUT WORKING ON PANTERA SONGS?
I’d barely heard the band at that point. I knew they were a pretty huge metal band, though. The label sent me their current CD, Vulgar Display of Power, with notes on the two songs they wished for me to remix. I thought I wouldn’t like the music, but it transpired that I enjoyed it. I found the prospect of remixing them incredibly daunting — this was my first real remix! So I had very little confidence in my first remixes being such a big band, but just got in there, so to speak!
DO YOU HAVE ANY INTERESTING STORIES ABOUT THE SESSION OR INTERACTING WITH THE BAND?
I spoke and met the band after at a local show to Birmingham. I was invited by their record label, given VIP, etc. The session itself was in my studio, where I record all my projects, but this was still in a primitive stage then and I was still learning through mistakes every minute, and remixes were hard back then in the early Nineties — no luxury of cut and paste and dealing with files. This was real tape, reel to reels, hard to work with. I sampled nearly every part of each song I wanted to use and then used simplistic cut-up methods to achieve this. Hard work.
WERE YOU HAPPY WITH HOW THE REMIXES CAME OUT?
At the time, happy-ish, but the lack of confidence was an issue. I didn’t hear them for almost 10 years [and then I] heard them again and thought they sounded incredibly thin, just due to the limitations of the studio equipment I has back then and my own skills as a producer. But the ideas were not too bad.
DID YOU EVER HEAR ANYTHING BACK FROM THE BAND ABOUT THE REMIXES?
Yes, when I met the entire band at the show I mentioned above. It was quite odd — the whole band were very complimentary and were very nice guys, [but] it appeared to me meeting them that Phil Anselmo was the only real Godflesh fan, but that the other guys appreciated what I did with their music. I recall Vinnie Paul saying, “It’s like real metal what you’ve done. At least it’s none of that dance crap!” [Laughs]