Earlier this week Billboard announced that Pantera’s surviving members, vocalist Philip Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown, signed with Artist Group International and agreed to a reunion tour in 2023. “We are thrilled to be working with such an iconic band and bringing their music back to the fans,” said Artist Group agent Peter Pappalardo.
Most metal fans thought that with the deaths of brothers “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott and Vinnie Paul, that any chance of a Pantera reunion and/or tour was over. The band split up in 2003, and Abbott and Paul formed Damageplan. Abbott was tragically shot and killed onstage in 2004, and Paul died of heart complications in 2018.
It has now been announced that the vacancies in the group will be filled by Black Label Society/Ozzy guitarist Zakk Wylde and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante. According to Billboard, the lineup has been given a green light by the estates of the Abbott brothers. Brown said last year said that Wylde wouldn’t tour with Pantera if a reunion were to happen, but he obviously had a change of heart.
Benante and Anthrax had long been tour mates and friends of Pantera and especially of the Abbott brothers. Dimebag guested on numerous Anthrax albums, and Anselmo even made an appearance on the band’s 1998 effort, “Volume 8: The Threat Is Real,” singing backing vocals on the song, “Killing Box.” Benante told SiriusXM about the first time he met Vinnie Paul: “The very first time, it was the first time we ever were in Texas. And those guys were there. We played at this club, and I believe Pantera were the opening band. A mutual friend of ours, who everybody knows now — Rita [Haney, longtime girlfriend of Dimebag] — she kind of was the conduit to grouping us together to become friendly. We’ve known those guys since 1985, and just the two of them, Darrell and Vinnie, after you met those two, it was like you had a friend in Texas, both of them, and they just made the experience so much better, and you immediately bonded. So throughout the years, we just remained friends.”
“I always equated Dime and Vinnie as, like, Alex and Eddie from Van Halen; I always thought Pantera was like Van Halen reborn,” he continued. “They had a guitar player, who was a hero. The drummers were fucking awesome, but the thing about Vinnie that, I think, not a lot of people know — maybe they do — but from a technical side of things, Vinnie made those Pantera records sound like that. He was the guy behind it all who was turning the knobs, EQing sh*t so that his kick drum wasn’t fighting with Darrell’s f*cking chunky guitar. He was a lot of the brains and the glue that held that band together and, basically, pushed that band.”
Wylde had previously told “The Cassius Morris Show” that he was open to the idea of joining Pantera to pay tribute to the band’s fallen founders: “When Saint Vinnie was still around, they were talking about it then. I mean, the way I always looked at it is it’s a Pantera celebration and an honor. I mean, every night I’m playing with Ozz, we honor Saint Rhoads [late Ozzy guitarist Randy Rhoads]. I’m playing the Randy stuff every night, and I’m blessed and it’s an honor to do it. Basically, we’re paying tribute to Randy every night — keeping his music alive. If we got together and we ended up doing it, it would be like… I just look at it like if Eric Clapton went out and was with Mitch [Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix’s drummer] and Noel [Redding, Hendrix’s bass player] and singing and playing Jimi’s songs, and he’s honoring Jimi, ’cause that was his buddy. No one’s replacing anybody. No one’s replacing Randy Rhoads — he was a one-off. Just like no one’s replacing Jimi Hendrix and no one’s replacing Dime — or Vinnie.”
Anselmo and Brown had previously joined Black Label Society on stage to perform Pantera’s “I’m Broken.” Pantera was one of the most successful metal bands of the 1990s. Their 1994 album, “Far Beyond Driven,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The band has sold more than 20 million albums and received four Grammy nominations. The band’s last album was 2000’s “Reinventing the Steel.”
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