The Pantera reunion tour with Philip Anselmo and Rex Brown featuring Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante filling in for late guitarist and drummer Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul has been all over the headlines lately. But a newly published interview conducted in February shows that Anselmo had strong feelings concerning continuing the legacy of Pantera even before the reunion was announced.
Speaking with The Pit on a variety of topics, Anselmo comments at one point that he felt that Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul would have wanted the Pantera legacy to continue.
“Dimebag and Vince always wanted this band to be a legacy band, to be massive, to be our own conduit to success, simply put,” said Anselmo (seen at 7:14 in the video below). “I think Dime and Vince — I know Dime and Vince — would want the legacy and the name of Pantera to go on and on and on and in everybody’s damn face. I know that for sure. Abso-fucking-utely, dude. That would be their biggest dream.” Those comments were made in February, well before July’s revelation that a Pantera reunion tour was in the works for 2023.
During a recent appearance on Eddie Trunk’s Trunk Nation SiriusXM show, Benante revealed he was first contacted about the possibility of the tour in December of last year, with the talks becoming more serious in January and February of this year.
Talk of a Pantera reunion started circulating with the potential for Zakk Wylde to be involved in 2012, but at the time Vinnie Paul shut down the possibility, stating, “Without my brother being part of it, it just doesn’t make any sense.” That was a position he maintained until his death in 2018. In recent years, Anselmo has started revisiting Pantera’s music with his band the Illegals.
