And the winner is: 1983 LP release. One of the hardest things about doing a comparison/review of this album is just finding a copy of it, never mind two copies of it on two different formats. Pantera seemed eager to do all they could to erase this album from history and bury it, declining to acknowledge it in their discography and interviews and even (so I remember reading somewhere) refusing to sign a fan's vinyl copy of the album during a convention. Even the VH1 special on the history of the band fails to make anything more than a passing mention of this entire era of the band, with only the briefest lip service made to the fact that it ever happened and one quick photo of the original members outfitted in full glam getup. That's a hell of an effort overall to discount, diminish, and erase in light of their post Vulgar Display of Power image as a brutal groove metal outfit. Eighties glam metal like this certainly wasn't in vogue in the 1990s (or indeed even today), and the laughably bad cover artwork of Metal Magic certainly runs afoul of metal's present day artistic sensibilities. Little of the band's future potential on is display here. But is the music really that BAD? The short answer is no, it isn't, not if you take it for what it is instead of trying to fit it into some idea of what modern metal should sound like. While there are few if any nascent signs of what Pantera would eventually become, and thematically the lyrics are fairly well steeped in silly 1980s hair metal anthems of rockin' and partying, keep in mind that the band members were in their teens when this was made ("Diamond" Darrell Abbott was all of 17 years old at the time). The more standout cuts on the album, "Metal Magic," "Widowmaker," and "Nothin' On (But the Radio)," while not representing anything approaching great metal, aren't nearly as bad as the cover art would have you expext.

Given that Metal Magic has never had (and never will have) any official digital release, it was a given that the CD would be a needledrop recording made from an original vinyl copy. That's all well and good, but what's neither well nor good is the quality of the sound reproduction being offered. The sound is absolutely horrible, extremely thin and sibilant and marred by a persistent distortion that progressively worsens throughout playback until the end of each side is reached. If you have enough experience with vinyl or you grew up with it, you will recognize this distortion effect as the sign of a playback stylus that is well past its prime and needs to be replaced. The effect is at its very worst in album closers "Sad Lover" and "Rock Out!" both of which are rendered nearly unlistenable. Aside from that extremely significant issue, the mastering job itself is fine, with apparent full dynamics of the (horrible) transfer having been retained. The original LP by contrast sounds good. Though the production is by no means stellar, everything in the mix comes through clearly and intelligibly. It's especially interesting to compare Darrell Abbott's guitar sound here with his tradmark solid state digital sound from much later in his career. I don't much care for the guitar sound on this album, as it's almost wholly devoid of any meatiness and is presented in an overall production which lacks any real impact, but at least it's still a lot better than plenty of other metal albums from the period that weren't released on major labels (and even some that were). If it isn't obvious which release of this album to get if you have the choice - and are willing to pay the high prices commanded by the secondhand market - it's an original LP... if you can find one.