1981-2003, 2022-"Dimebag" Darrell AbbottGuitar1981-2003
Vinnie PaulDrums1981-2003
Rex BrownBass1982–2003, 2022–
Terry GlazeVocals1982-1986
Phil AnselmoVocals1987-2003, 2022-
Pantera started as a glam metal band. In 1981 they performed under the moniker Pantera's Metal Magic and opened for other metal acts like Stryper, Dokken, and Quiet Riot. The band later dissociated from these early albums and blocked their release.
In 1987, Pantera auditioned a new vocalist named Phil Anselmo. The singer clicked with the rest of the band and the new lineup decided to change their image before releasing 1988's Power Metal album. With Anselmo at the helm, Pantera became one of the top metal bands of the '90s.
In 1988, Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott was offered a gig playing guitar for Megadeth. Darrell turned down the opportunity because his brother Vinnie Paul wasn't allowed to join him in Megadeth, who had already hired a new drummer named Nick Menza.
Anselmo is crazy about horror movies, so much so that he started the Housecore Horror Festival in 2013. In
his Songfacts interview, he listed some of his favorite films:
The Sinful DwarfInnocents from HellI Bury the LivingThe House with the Laughing WindowsPantera's fifth album, Cowboys From Hell, was released by Atco Records in July 1990. The record was produced by Terry Date, who is well known in the hard rock world for producing bands like Slipknot, Deftones, White Zombie and Soundgarden.
Darrell Abbott was shot and killed onstage in December 2004 while performing with his new band Damageplan in Columbus, Ohio. The shooter was a crazed fan who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and believed that Pantera had stolen his lyrics.
As a side project, Anselmo formed a New Orleans supergroup called Down that released their first album, NOLA, in 1995. He also formed a band called Superjoint Ritual during his time in Pantera. After Pantera disbanded, his focus turned to these groups and other projects.
Abbott is one of the most celebrated metal guitarists of all time.
Guitar World magazine ranked his solo on "
Floods" #15 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time.
James Niggemeyer, the Columbus, Ohio police officer who entered a local nightclub and took out Dimebag Darrell's killer, was so affected by the incident he had to give up his career due to PTSD and severe anxiety disorder.
Rex Brown and Phil Anselmo, the only surviving members of Pantera's best-known lineup, reunited in 2022 for their first shows in 21 years.
Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society) and
Charlie Benate (Anthrax) filled in for Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul.
Pantera's fellow Texans ZZ Top were a huge influence on the band in their early days. "It was all over Texas at the time,"
Rex Brown recalled to Rick Beato. "ZZ Top, you gotta throw them in there somewhere fellas, because they influenced more in those first couple of records than anyone. For us, as a region of Texas, it was a big ass state. But when I first heard them, I was driving my bicycle about 8-years-old and I heard 'La Grange,' and something just happened. I lost my mind."
In a
Songfacts interview with Rex Brown, he talked about how songwriting worked in Pantera. "A lot of the times Dime would come in with primitive riffs and we would write everything in the studio," he said. "We always knew which ones were going to work... I'd say 9 out of 10 times, the stuff that we did start tracking ended up on records."
Pantera kept their metal heavy, motivated in part by Metallica's 1991
Black Album (the one with "
Enter Sandman"), which sanded down some of the edges to reach a much wider audience. Pantera responded with their 1992 album
Vulgar Display Of Power. "When Metalllica dropped this big commercial record of theirs, they unwittingly gave us this big, gaping hole in the market to fill," Rex Brown wrote in his memoir
Official Truth, 101 Proof. "We were the band to take over the void they'd just left behind."
Pantera's album Far Beyond Driven went to #1 in 1994, taking over the top spot from Ace Of Base.
