The band was originally named Pantera's Metal Magic and consisted of Donnie Hart on vocals, Dimebag Darrell (then known as Diamond Darell) and Terry Glaze on guitar, Tommy Bradford on bass, and Vinnie Paul on drums. In 1982, the band was renamed Pantera in order to shorten the name and to settle an agreement between all band members. Hart left the band because he didn't agree with the bands' ethics and Glaze became the group's vocalist, leaving Darrell as the sole guitarist. Later that year Bradford also departed and was replaced by
Rex Brown (then known as Rexx Rocker). Pantera became an underground favorite, though its regional tours in this era never took them beyond
Texas,
Oklahoma, and
Louisiana. The band began supporting fellow
heavy metal acts such as
Stryper,
Dokken, and
Quiet Riot, who in turn promoted Pantera's debut,
Metal Magic.
Metal Magic was released on the band's record label with the same name in 1983 and produced by the Abbott brothers' father,
Jerry Abbott (referred to as "The Eldn"), at Pantego Studios.
The band went through temporary vocalists Rick Mythiasin and Matt L’Amour before eventually discovering
New Orleans native
Phil Anselmo in 1987. Anselmo had previously been the vocalist for the bands Samhain (not to be confused with
Glenn Danzig's band of the same name) and Razorwhite. Upon playing with Pantera, Anselmo immediately clicked with the other three members. More than just the band's image was changing, however. In 1988, Pantera released its first album with Anselmo, entitled
Power Metal. By far the band's heaviest album at this point,
Power Metal was a mix of 1980s hard rock and thrash metal, sometimes blending both styles in a single song. Complementing the band's new sonic approach was Anselmo's harder-edged vocals compared to those of Terrence Lee. After the release of
Power Metal, the band members decided to seriously reconsider their glam metal sound and image. Referring to the band's spandex appearance, Vinnie Paul remarked at a band meeting that "These magic clothes don't play music; we do. Let's just go out there and be comfortable—jeans, t-shirt, whatever—and see where it goes."
As with the previous three 1980s albums,
Power Metal was released on Metal Magic Records.
Power Metal began to reflect the characteristic sound of later Pantera, though it still contained many elements of 1980s
glam metal. The band members would later ignore their independent releases, including
Power Metal, as they sculpted a new, heavier image to accompany their developing "
groove" sound. Their four independent albums are not listed on the band's official website and have become hard-to-find collector's items.
Band tension and The Great Southern Trendkill (1994–1996)
According to the Abbott brothers, frontman Phil Anselmo began behaving strangely and distanced himself from the band when they returned to the road in 1995. The rest of the band members first thought that Pantera's fame had gotten to Anselmo, but Anselmo cited back pain from years of intense performances as the reason for his erratic behavior. Anselmo attempted to subdue his pain through alcohol, but this, as he admits, was affecting his performances and "putting some worry into the band." Doctors predicted that with surgery, Anselmo's back problem could be corrected, but that the recovery time could be a year or more. Not wanting to spend that much time away from the band, Anselmo refused, and began using
heroin as a painkiller.
Anselmo's on-stage remarks became notorious during this time. After stating at a
Montreal concert that "rap music advocates the killing of white people", Anselmo denied accusations of racism, and later issued an apology, stating that he was drunk and that his remarks were a mistake.
Pantera's next album,
The Great Southern Trendkill (released May 22, 1996), came out during grunge rock's dominance and at the onset of
rap metal. It is often considered Pantera's "overlooked" album. Phil Anselmo recorded the vocals for this release in
Nine Inch Nails frontman
Trent Reznor's studio in
New Orleans while the rest of the band members recorded in
Dallas, evidence of the continued distancing between Anselmo and the rest of the band. In comparison to the band's previous efforts, there was a heavier emphasis on vocal
overdubbing in a somewhat "demonic" fashion. Drug abuse is a popular theme in
Trendkill, as exemplified by tracks such as "
Suicide Note Pt. I", "Suicide Note Pt. II" and "Living Through Me (Hell's Wrath)". Perhaps the most popular song from
Trendkill is "
Drag the Waters". "Drag the Waters" became the album's only
music video, and likewise, the only track from the album to appear on the band's
compilation album. Another
Trendkill single, "
Floods", achieved acclaim largely because of Darrell's complex
guitar solo in the song, which ranked #15 on
Guitar World magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos" of all-time.
In an episode of the short-lived Australian sex advice show "Sex Life", in a segment discussing what to make of a man's CD collection when first going back to his place, the host drew out a copy of The Great Southern Trendkill and referred to Pantera as "the loudest band in the world."
Damageplan and Darrell's murder (2004)
After Pantera's breakup, Darrell and Vinnie formed a new band,
Damageplan, with vocalist
Pat Lachman and bassist
Bob Zilla. The group released their first album,
New Found Power, in
February of 2004. The album was a commercial success; over 44,000 copies were sold in its first week alone and within a year over 100,000 copies were sold. However, some fans felt that Damageplan's material did not measure up to that of Pantera.
Tragedy struck on December 8, 2004. The band was performing in support of the album at a show at the Alrosa Villa in
Columbus, Ohiowhen, less than a minute into the first song of their set, mentally unstable
Nathan Gale, 25, went onstage and
shot and killed Darrell. Gale also killed fan Nathan Bray, 23, club employee Erin Halk, 29, and Pantera security official Jeff "Mayhem" Thompson, 40, and injured longtime Pantera and Damageplan drum technician
John "Kat" Brooks and Damageplan tour manager Chris Paluska before being shot dead by police officer James Niggemeyer.
Aftermath (2004-present)
When Anselmo called in the aftermath of the murders, Rita Haney, Darrell's girlfriend, answered one of Anselmo's calls and said she would "blow Anselmo's head off" if he attended Darrell's funeral. Not long after Dimebag's murder, Anselmo received a heated message from Vinnie, which (according to Anselmo) went along the lines that Anselmo's day was coming. Anselmo's rebuttal was that everybody's day is coming and that if his day should end before Vinnie's it would not change anything, except for Vinnie to go through 'losing another brother'. Public comments made by Phil Anselmo following the shooting suggested that he had considered reuniting with the band prior to Darrell's death. However, one year after the murder Vinnie stated in an interview that this reunion was never going to happen.
On May 11, 2006, the
VH1 Behind the Music episode on Pantera premiered. While focusing heavily on Darrell's murder, the episode also detailed the band's glam metal beginnings, its rise in popularity after the change in musical direction, and the conflicts between Anselmo and the Abbott brothers in the band's later years that would tear them apart.
When asked by Crave Music in 2006 if there was any chance of reconciling with Phil Anselmo, Vinnie Paul answered "Absolutely not. That's it." The former Pantera drummer has since begun work on
Hellyeah, a collaboration between him and members from
Mudvayne and
Nothingface. Both Anselmo and Brown have reunited with Down, and supported
Heaven & Hell and
Megadeth on their 2007
Canadian tour, as well as supporting
Metallica on the first half of their
World Magnetic Tour.
On March 30, 2010, Pantera released a greatest-hits collection, titled "1990-2000: A Decade of Domination". It was made available exclusively at Walmart stores and is made up of 10 tracks that were remastered.
Legacy and influences
antera have been influential to the development of both
metalcore and
nu metal. They have also been called one of the pioneers of the
New Wave of American Heavy Metal.
Popmatters has claimed that, "Darrell Abbott's influence on the entire genre of heavy metal is massive; after
Cowboys From Hell and
Vulgar Display of Power, every notable young American metal band since has, in some way or another, copped their guitar style from those records:
Tool,
Korn,
Limp Bizkit,
Disturbed,
Bullet For My Valentine,
Slipknot,
Avenged Sevenfold,
Hatebreed,
Lamb of God,
Shadows Fall,
Mastodon... the list is endless."
Pantera has toured with
Ozzfest as main stage acts twice; the band played at the second annual Ozzfest in 1997 and the fifth Ozzfest in 2000. Over the course of their career, Pantera's members became known for their excessive partying and debauchery, even acquiring an official drink called the "Black Tooth Grin". The "Black Tooth Grin" ("Black Tooth", "The Grin", or "BTG", alternatively), named after lyrics from
Megadeth's "
Sweating Bullets", is a mixture of
Crown Royal or
Seagram 7 whisky (or both) and
Coca-Cola.
Pantera also adopted a self-described "take no shit" attitude, epitomized in its popular song "
5 Minutes Alone" from the album
Far Beyond Driven. According to Vinnie Paul, the song originated when, during a show in
San Diego,
California, Anselmo was annoyed by a heckler and encouraged the crowd to "jump [his] ass and beat the shit out of him on the spot." Consequently, the band was sued; the man's father took action and called Pantera's manager, saying, "You just give me five minutes alone with that Phil Anselmo guy and I'll show him who's big daddy around here", to which Anselmo responded, "You just give me five minutes alone with that cat's dad and I'll whoop his ass."
The band members take pride in what they perceive to be an uncompromising career in which they never "
sold out" or gave into trends. This is most noticeably highlighted in the themes and title of
The Great Southern Trendkill. On Pantera's official website, Anselmo puts it in his own words:
We've survived every fucking trend—heavy metal, "grunge metal", funk metal, rap metal—and we're still here. We put everyone on notice that we don't fuck around. Our fans know we're true right down to the fucking core.
Similarly, the die-hard attitude of "We'll Grind That Axe For a Long Time" (from
Reinventing the Steel) is, according to Anselmo, "in a way, our motto."
Aside from their
thrash metal influences, the band members cite heavy metal pioneers
Black Sabbath as one of their favorite bands. As a tribute, Pantera has recorded three different covers of Black Sabbath songs (all from the
Ozzy Osbourne era). The first was "
Planet Caravan", a slower, quieter song planned for the first Sabbath tribute album,
Nativity in Black, that eventually became the final track on
Far Beyond Driven. The band performed Sabbath's "Electric Funeral" on the second
Nativity in Black. A previously unreleased cover of Sabbath's "
Hole in the Sky" was included on the band's 2003 compilation album,
The Best of Pantera: Far Beyond the Great Southern Cowboys' Vulgar Hits!Pantera's affinity for Black Sabbath is also shown through the lyrics, "Your trust is in whiskey and weed and Black Sabbath", in "Goddamn Electric". The same song also mentions
Slayer, one of the band's thrash metal influences.
Pantera has come under some criticism within the fringes of the heavy metal world in relation to New Orleans
thrash metal band
Exhorder. Some fans have accused Pantera of stealing from Exhorder the groove metal sound for which they became famous. While Pantera's style change on
Cowboys from Hell was released before Exhorder's debut,
Slaughter in the Vatican, Exhorder self-released two
demos in the late 1980s (around the time that Pantera was still playing
glam metal) that a number of fans believe to be the real birth of the musical style Pantera popularized.
Allmusic points to several elements of Exhorder's debut that could potentially explain its lack of success in relation to Pantera. In disagreement with the opinion that Exhorder is "Pantera minus the good songs", AMG's review of Slaughter in the Vatican expresses that "perhaps a more accurate billing would be to call them Pantera without the major label backing." They also point to the fact that the title of Exhorder's debut, along with the unsubtle album cover, "certainly didn't help [its] cause any."
However, some fans and critics dispute any notion that Pantera "stole" Exhorder's sound. Brian Davis, a contributor to
Internet radio station
KNAC, addresses the issue as follows:
Exhorder's main "claim to fame" is the common opinion that they're the band that Pantera stole their sound from. That's total bullshit. There are minor similarities in guitar style, and on occasion, vocalist Kyle Thomas spits out a line or scream that will bring Pantera to mind, but to go so far as to say that Pantera is an Exhorder clone is ludicrous.
Despite originally decrying Pantera as a rip-off to their sound, lead vocalist of Exhorder, Kyle Thomas, has stated that he does not care about any of the criticism and is sick of seeing Exhorder's name tied to Pantera's. He also stated that he and the members of Pantera were great friends who used to tour together, and that he mourns the loss of Dimebag Darrell. Recently, Thomas suggested that while it is possible Pantera may have been influenced by his band, the members of Pantera "work[ed] a ... lot harder than [we] did."
