MIKE PORTNOY: 'PANTERA was the band that kept metal alive in the '90s'
07-10-2024
In a new interview with Consequence, DREAM THEATER‘s Mike Portnoy named PANTERA‘s 1992 album “Vulgar Display Of Power” as one of the 10 LPs which influenced his drumming. He said about the effort: “‘Vulgar Display Of Power’ came out around the same time as (DREAM THEATER‘s) ‘Images And Words’ back in 1992. We were actually labelmates at the time. So, we were working on the same label with the same people. And I remember hearing this when it came out, it just floored me. I was already a fan from ‘Cowboys From Hell’ that came out a year or two earlier, but this took their new sound and style and elevated it to a whole new level. To me, PANTERA was the band that kept metal alive in the ’90s.
“By the time I was coming up with DREAM THEATER in the early ’90s, thrash was starting to go away, grunge was killing all of us,” he continued. “We were all fighting grunge, whether you were metal or prog or whatever, so PANTERA, to me, was the band that carried the flag. When METALLICA was going through their changes and ANTHRAX were going through their changes, PANTERA was carrying the metal flag throughout the ’90s. And I have to give credit to maybe MACHINE HEAD and SEPULTURA as well.
“PANTERA, they took the heaviness of the thrash and speed metal world, but they really gave it a groove,” Portnoy added. “I always appreciated that. They had a Texas swing and they had that swagger and they had the riffs and the heaviness of all these heavy thrash and speed metal bands, but they had the swagger of MÖTLEY CRÜE or GUNS N’ ROSES, as weird as it is to say. And that’s maybe why they toured with SKID ROW when this album came out.
“Vinnie Paul (Abbott, PANTERA drummer) played with a swing and a groove that a lot of thrash and speed metal drummers maybe didn’t have. And I say that with all due respect, because a lot of those drummers blow my mind and are incredibly influential on me, but Vinnie, like a Mikkey Dee (KING DIAMOND, MOTÖRHEAD), had that swagger and that groove and really made these riffs that Dimebag (Darrell Abbott, PANTERA guitarist) was playing just really swing and groove.”
Last year, Portnoy weighed in on the fact that PANTERA‘s surviving members Philip Anselmo (vocals) and Rex Brown (bass) have united with guitarist Zakk Wylde (OZZY OSBOURNE, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY) and drummer Charlie Benante (ANTHRAX) for a world tour under the PANTERA banner. Anselmo and Brown, along with Wylde and Benante, headlined a number of major festivals across South America, Asia, North America and Europe and staged some of their own headline concerts. They also supported METALLICA on a massive North American stadium tour in 2023 and 2024.
PANTERA has previously announced its 2025 European tour dates.
Tour dates:
Jan. 21 – Helsinki, FI @ Ice Hall
Jan. 23 – Stockholm, SE @ Hovet
Jan. 24 – Oslo, NO @ Spektrum
Jan. 26 – Copenhagen, DK @ Royal Arena
Jan. 28 – Amsterdam, NL @ AFAS Live
Jan. 31 – Ljubljana, SI @ Arena Stožice
Feb. 01 – Ostrava, CZ @ Ostravar Aréna
Feb. 03 – Budapest, HU @ Budapest Arena
Feb. 04 – Kraków, PL @ Tauron Arena
Feb. 06 – Hamburg, DE @ Sporthalle
Feb. 07 – Berlin, DE @ Max-Schmeling-Halle
Feb. 09 – Düsseldorf, DE @ Mitsubishi Electric Halle
Feb. 10 – Brussels, BE @ Forest National
Feb. 12 – Bologna, IT @ Unipol Arena
Feb. 13 – Zürich, CH @ Hallenstadion
Feb. 15 – Paris, FR @ Adidas Arena
The five-show U.K./Ireland run will kick off at the OVO Hydro arena in Glasgow on February 18 before continuing the following night (February 19) at First Direct Arena in Leeds, a gig at the 3Arena in Dublin on February 21, making a stop at BP Pulse Live in Birmingham on February 23, and concluding at London’s OVO Arena Wembley on February 25.
In a recent interview with Sweetwater, Brown spoke about the decision to tour with a reformed version of PANTERA. The lineup has reportedly been given a green light by the estates of PANTERA‘s founders, drummer Vincent “Vinnie Paul” Abbott and guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. Rex said: “The last show, man, I had a creepy, like a cold — something came by me. It felt like there was a cold feeling. And I’ve gotten this a couple of times before. When we were down recording with Charlie — me and Charlie just went down [in late 2022], put up eighty to a hundred hours of tape before Zakk [started rehearsing with us]. Zakk was still on the road. So we wanted to get the bass and the drum real tight, and we had this scratch guitar player. I felt that same chill. And, to me, they’re angels. And I think you know who they are. Those guys, I think they’re looking down, or they’re looking around us, with us, and I think they’re digging what they’re seeing, man. I really do. And that’s the only kind of way I can look at it, and get as close as we can with Charlie and Zakk. And God, it’s getting really, really good. And there’s so much more potential to get even tighter.”
Speaking about the opportunity to perform PANTERA‘s music to new generations of fans who never saw the band before, Rex said: “There’s a lot of memories in this band that are hard to put down. And losing the brothers, I just never in a million years thought that something like that would happen. Here we are 22 years later, and to see these new fans’ faces. You’ve got one kid sitting there, or man, woman or child crying, and you have this other guy just going, ‘You did it right.’ It’s just amazing.”
Regarding how he and the rest of the current PANTERA lineup have balanced honoring the band’s legacy with any new creative goals they might have, Rex said: “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,” he continued. “And by God, this music needs to be heard again. It does. It needed to for a long fucking 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.”
Dimebag‘s longtime girlfriend Rita Haney in 2011 called on Vinnie and Philip to settle their differences in honor of Dimebag.
Vinnie, who was Dimebag‘s brother, and Anselmo had not spoken since PANTERA split in 2003. But the relationship got even more acrimonious when Vinnie suggested that some remarks the vocalist had made about Dimebag in print just weeks earlier might have incited Dimebag‘s killer.
Haney told the producers of “Behind The Music Remastered: Pantera” that she forgave the singer after they found themselves unexpectedly face to face at a concert in California.
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