In a recent interview conducted by American Musical Supply, PANTERA bassist Rex Brown discussed the choice to embark on a tour with a reformed version of the band.
PANTERA, consisting of Phil Anselmo on vocals, Rex Brown on bass, Zakk Wylde on guitar, and Charlie Benante on drums, is set to headline 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.
“This is a completely different thing, man,” Rex said. “We have Charlie and Zakk now, and they’re just — number one, they’ve been great friends of ours for all these years. We get along extra super cool. Charlie and I went down, probably put about 80, 100 hours on tape of all the songs we were gonna do for the set, and others that we would want to do. Charlie and I worked on this for six months before we ever got into a rehearsal room. That’s just how good friends we are. Charlie has been one of my best friends for years. So, this is another band.
“It’s hard to fill the shoes of the brothers. At the same time, this has become a really tight unit. And Zakk just puts the extra… Dime was a very unique guitar player, and he was my best friend, and it’s good to see those boys up on the screens and with us. And that’s what this is about tonight, for me.”
When asked about the approach he and the current PANTERA lineup have taken in balancing reverence for the band’s legacy with their pursuit of new creative objectives, Rex shared: “There’s many ways that we wanna keep this legacy alive, ’cause the music is still played all over. We have a whole new generation of fans that, they probably wouldn’t have heard this stuff if we weren’t playing out here playing these shows. And so, that generation of fans — let’s say the 15-to-18-year-old kids that come out — they’ll shortly have children, and that keeps that new generation alive. And Phillip even says it in the set, the parents of the ’90s, which I’m a parent of the ’90s, it’s a very important statement in the set because it’s about the gratitude.
“We’re not doing this for ourselves; we’re doing it for the name and the brand PANTERA,” Rex added. “And by God, this music needs to be heard again. It does. It needed to for a long f**king time. And that’s what we’re here doing tonight… It’s just wonderful to be able to do this and pay homage to my music, the riffs that I wrote, or the riffs that Dime wrote, or the patterns that Vinnie played, and for what Phil came up with — tremendous impact on this music.”
During a recent interview with AndrewHaug.com at Knotfest Australia in Melbourne, Rex 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.”
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.
