Pantera Confirmed Among Headliners For Mexico’s Monterrey Metal Fest
Pantera will perform at the Monterrey Metal Fest on 6 December at Estadio Mobil Super in Monterrey, Mexico. Also scheduled to appear are Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate, Behemoth and Stryper, among others.
Aside from their Monterrey show, Pantera will also co-headline the first night of this year’s edition of Mexico’s Hell & Heaven Metal Fest. The reactivated band will share the stage with Scorpions, Meshuggah, Arch Enemy, Epica and Cradle Of Filth, among other artists, on December 2 at Foro Pegaso in Toluca.
Other festivals Pantera have been confirmed for are at Slipknot’s Knotfest Colombia, Knotfest Chile and Knotfest Brasil, all of which will take place in December. Knotfest Colombia is scheduled for Friday, December 9 at Campin Circuit of Bogotá. Knotfest Chile is slated to take place on Sunday, December 11 at Estadio Monumental in Santiago. Knotfest Brasil will follow on Sunday, December 18 at Sambódromo do Anhembi in São Paulo.
In July, it was announced that Pantera’s surviving members Philip Anselmo (vocals) and Rex Brown (bass) will unite 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, will headline a number of major festivals across North America and Europe and stage some of their own headline concerts.
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 last year said Wylde wouldn’t tour with Pantera if a reunion were to happen. It’s unclear what changed his mind.
Benante told SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” about how he plans to approach the Pantera gig: “I can’t go do this as the drummer from Anthrax because it would be a different sound completely. So the way I’m gonna do that is if you close your eyes, it’s gonna sound like it’s Vinnie, basically. And that’s how it’s gonna be. The sound is gonna sound exactly like him.”
Wylde said that he had a similar mindset. “You approach it the same way as you do when I’m playing with Ozzy,” he said. “Obviously I’ve gotta learn [Randy] Rhoads’s stuff and I’ve gotta learn Jake’s [E. Lee] stuff, and when I was doing the [Black] Sabbath stuff, you learn it and do it as faithful as you can. Charlie’s gotta learn all of Vinnie’s parts. You approach it as if you’re in a cover band. When we do the Zakk Sabbath stuff,” referring to his Black Sabbath cover band, “I don’t start changing lyrics midway through ‘War Pigs’. You learn the songs — so that’s what you do.”