Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on The Mistress Carrie Podcast, Zakk Wylde opened up about touring with Phil Anselmo, Rex Brown, and Charlie Benante under the Pantera banner. The guitarist says the current band is “not Pantera” and that he considers it to be a “celebration.”

Wylde said the following:

“Well, [it’s] the Pantera celebration. It’s not Pantera. Pantera is Dime, Vinnie, Phil and Rex. So that’s Pantera. But no, it’s a beautiful thing honoring the guys every night. Everybody’s having a blast. Everyone that comes down to the shows either — you have the Pantera faithful taking a trip down memory lane, and you’ve got all the younger, like Phil always calls it, the new blood. And it’s amazing every night how many… It’s just a testament to what the fellas created. Because we’ve got so many young people that have never seen Pantera before.

For me, for my situation, I never got a chance to see Led Zeppelin. So, if zeppelin got back together, and you had, I mean, right now with Jason [Bonham] playing the drums, ’cause I never got a chance to see it. So, it’s that kind of situation. So it’s all the younger kids coming up hearing that their older brothers listened to it or their dad or whatever, and now they’re at the gig to hear this music live. So, to me, it’s truly a beautiful thing every night we play honoring the guys.”

He also added the following when asked if performing Pantera songs has had an affect on the way he views Dimebag’s playing:

“I already knew my buddy was great. I already knew Dime was great. But then the more I was learning this stuff, I was, like, he’s even greater than I ever thought. But, no, learning all the stuff or going through actually learning the songs, it’s just, aside of Dime’s great technique and his chops and everything like that… I mean, to me, his legacy is — I put it more like Tony Iommi, where what Tony created with [Black] Sabbath was basically its own entire genre of music. So Pantera, they’re the gold standard of that genre of music, whether it’s ‘power groove’ or whatever, what Dime called it. The Lamb Of God guys are amazing, but they’re cut from that cloth, that style of music that Pantera forged, and all the bands that come after that. I mean, it’s just kind of like Pantera, what Pantera created in their genre is the same thing as The Beatles, The [Rolling] Stones, Zeppelin and Sabbath, all the bands that we love, where they’re the benchmark of that style of music. So, yeah, that’s why I always tell everybody, it’s not so much how fast Dime was and everything like that; it’s what he wrote. And that’s his legacy, to me.”

[via Blabbermouth]