Walk

"Walk" is the third track on Vulgar Display of Power, 5:14 on the album and 5:15 as a single, credited to all four members. It was recorded in 1991 at Pantego Sound with Terry Date producing. Wikipedia and Rex Brown, in SPIN, say Darrell first played the riff, in 12/8, at a soundcheck on the Cowboys from Hell tour. Vinnie Paul told SPIN it had a shuffle groove, which they had never really messed around with. Anselmo said it was aimed at friends who treated the band differently after the major-label signing: I was just defending my own un-rock-star-ism.

Premier Guitar's 2010 analysis of the master tapes found Darrell's Bill Lawrence-equipped Dean From Hell into a solid-state Randall amplifier, a noise gate, drums tracked dry with the reverb added in the mix, and a solo built from three takes. The single came out on February 15, 1993 on East West, with a video shot at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago before fans; Wikipedia calls it the fourth single and the album page the second, so no number is given here. It was the band's first UK top 40 hit, at number 35. Brown told SPIN that radio would not play it back then.

Rolling Stone ranked it 29th on its 2023 list of the greatest heavy metal songs, and VH1 ranked it 16th. Setlist.fm counts it in 609 setlists, second only to "Cowboys from Hell"; it was the ninth song at Download in 2024. Avenged Sevenfold covered it in 2007, as the first single from Live in the LBC and Diamonds in the Rough, and Front Line Assembly sampled the riff in 1994. It has appeared in Triple Frontier and in the soundtrack of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Whether our upload is the studio or a live version is unknown.