PANTERA‘s recent Minneapolis club show on August 15th is being immortalized as the foundation for their upcoming live album. This marks the band’s first release featuring the newly formed lineup, uniting original members Philip Anselmo and Rex Brown with the talents of Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante.
Before PANTERA took the stage at First Avenue, a staff member came out and addressed the crowd (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Announcement number one. The band you are seeing tonight is not called COWBOYS FROM HELL,” a reference to the fact that First Avenue announced the PANTERA gig by tweeting out PANTERA‘s CFH — Cowboys From Hell — logo on Tuesday, placed over the band’s star on the wall outside the venue. “You are about to watch an exclusive show from the band PANTERA. The rumors got out quickly, [and] you guys bought up all the tickets. And you may have heard this rumor. And this is also true. We are recording our first-ever live album right here at the First Avenue. So, there’s a couple things you need to know about it. First of all, you will all, for eternity, be heard on a live PANTERA album. That’s the good news. The bad news, you’re not gonna get paid for this. Welcome to the music business.”
PANTERA‘s setlist for the concert was as follows:
01. A New Level
02. Mouth For War
03. Strength Beyond Strength
04. Becoming
05. I’m Broken
06. Suicide Note Pt. II
07. This Love
08. F**king Hostile
09. Walk (with Robert Trujillo and Kirk Hammett on backing vocals)
10. Domination / Hollow
11. Cowboys From Hell
Encore:
12. Yesterday Don’t Mean S**t
During an interview with AndrewHaug.com at Knotfest Australia in Melbourne this past March, PANTERA bassist Rex Brown was asked if he would be open to collaborate on new music with the reunited iteration of the band.
“Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I could tell you more but I’m not going to,” he responded.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Brown discussed the experience of performing as PANTERA for an entirely new generation of fans.
“You can’t see it on the YouTube. You can’t feel that vibe until you actually come to the show,” he said. “And we haven’t been doing interviews just for the fact we want people just to come to the show. It’s not about anything prior past or present that I wanna talk about today — just the show tonight.
“We’re pinching ourselves over these new fans that have never seen this before, and it’s a whole another generation that we either didn’t know a) that were out there, b) that were still listening to us, and the turnout has just been unbelievable. Of course, at first you had the naysayers and all that stuff, and as we played gig by gig, it’s made us tighter. And I’ve been trying to rehearse this band as much as I can within schedules, and we’ll just go down for no f**king reason and just jam. That’s what makes a band tight.”
PANTERA, consisting of Phil Anselmo on vocals, Rex Brown on bass, Zakk Wylde on guitar, and Charlie Benante on drums, is headlining major festivals in North America, South America, and Europe. Additionally, they will be performing their own headline concerts and supporting METALLICA on a massive stadium tour in 2024. This marks a significant moment for PANTERA fans, as it is the first time the band’s surviving members have come together for live performances in over two decades.
According to Billboard, the lineup has been given a green light by the estates of the band’s founders, drummer Vincent “Vinnie Paul” Abbott and guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, as well as Brown, who previously said Wylde wouldn’t tour with PANTERA if a reunion were to happen. It’s unclear what changed his mind.
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