Pantera returned to the recording studio with Anselmo in 1999 and cut its last album,Reinventing the Steel, which was released on March 21, 2000. Steel debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 and included "Revolution Is My Name" and "Goddamn Electric", the latter of which featured a Kerry King outro solo recorded (backstage in one take) during Ozzfest in Dallas. "Revolution Is My Name" became the band's fourth nomination for Best Metal Performance in the 2001 Grammys.
In 2000, Pantera played on the mainstage of Ozzfest alongside Ozzy Osbourne,Godsmack, Static-X, Methods of Mayhem, Incubus, P.O.D., Black Label Society, Queens of the Stone Age, and Apartment 26. In November the band cancelled their planned tour after Anselmo broke his ribs after falling during his eighth annual House of Shock event.[20]
The band once again returned to touring and visited the United States (where they were guest musicians on the show Spongebob Squarepants in the episode "Pre-Hibernation Week"), Canada, South Korea, Australia, and Europe. The tour in Europe was cut short, however, by the September 11, 2001 attacks which left the band stranded in Dublin, Ireland for 6 days as a result of all flights being cancelled. This would be the last time the members of Pantera performed together. Back home, the band planned to release its fourth home video in Summer 2002 and record another studio album later that year, but neither came about.
Anselmo again engaged in numerous side projects. In March 2002, Down released its second studio album, Down II: A Bustle in Your Hedgerow, which featured Rex Brown on bass following Todd Strange's departure in 1999. Brown remains Down's full-time bassist, having appeared on their subsequent release in 2007. Also, in May of that year Anselmo's Superjoint Ritual released its debut, Use Once and Destroy. Vinnie Paul claims that Anselmo told him he would take a year off following the events of September 11, 2001, but Anselmo's touring and record output for both Superjoint Ritual and Down contradicted this. The Abbott brothers were frustrated, and held out for a time, assuming Anselmo would return. However, according to Anselmo, taking a break from Pantera was a "mutual thing" between each of the band members.
The band officially broke up in 2003, also the year when their "Best Of" compilation album was released (on September 23), when the Abbott brothers concluded that Anselmo had abandoned Pantera and would not return. The break-up of the band was not amicable and subsequently a war of words was waged between the former bandmates via the heavy metal and musical press. The Abbott brothers and Pantera crew members claimed that they tried numerous times to contact Anselmo over the phone to reorganize Pantera, but Anselmo maintains that they never called him. Caught up in the torrent was Rex Brown, who later said "It was a bunch of he said, she said nonsense that was going on, and I wasn't going to get in the middle of it." Anselmo's comment in a 2004 issue of Metal Hammer magazine saying that "Dimebag deserves to be beaten severely" typified Pantera's internal conflicts; Anselmo insists that this comment was tongue-in-cheek. This explanation was soon dismissed by Vinnie Paul, who said shortly after the 2004 murder of his brother that he had personally listened to the audio files of the interview and that Anselmo had not been misquoted or misrepresented, but said the exact words which appeared in the article.
In July 2004, Vulgar Display of Power went double-platinum, and The Great Southern Trendkill went platinum the next month.
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 while the band was performing in support of the album at a December 8, 2004 show at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohiowhen, less than a minute into the first song of their set, mentally unstable, Nathan Gale, 25, who was arguing with a tattoo dealer earlier that day, went onstage and shot and killed Darrell, 38. 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 recevied 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 andNothingface. 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
Pantera have been influential to the development of both metalcore and nu metal. They have also been called one of the pioneers of theNew 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, 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 fromMegadeth'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.
Exhorder controversy
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 stationKNAC, 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 a ... lot harder than did."
