It's official, a """Pantera reunion""" is happening.

[youngthrasher9]

I was surprised that Phil sounded this good tbh. I am not surprised that Charlie is killing it, however.

Zakk could’ve been replaced with a few people performance wise, here, I think. I actually think that his guitar was having tuning issues during A New Level, but I don’t know for sure.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Pretty sure they were tuned down on Pantera live album 101 proof.

Standard tuned. Maybe down a few cents.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

I'll give props to Charlie though. Dude doesn't get enough credit for how great he is.

 

[NoodleFace]

I thought it sounded good. It's zakk playing Pantera. But I'm a zakk fanboy

 

[Jarmake]

It sounded like pantera with Zakk Wylde on guitar. Phil is in a great shape these days. Saw a couple of Down gigs from this summer and he sounded super solid there too.

Got to say I wasn't keeping up any hopes of this being any good, but I'm glad I was wrong.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Chances are good that if Phil went from sounding like trash to sounding surprisingly better, he isn't even vocalizing at all, but rather miming to a track.

 

[Riffer]

Pantera is a little tricky with tunings. On the records they usually set a tuner to 425hz and then tuned the guitar. So like on Vulgar you’d set your tuner to 425hz and tune to E. You’ll basically be in-between E and Eb actually. Same thing with Far Beyond Driven. Tune your guitar to D using the 425hz setting and you’ll be flatter than D but sharper than C# and you can play along to I’m Broken, 5 Minutes Alone, etc. CFH I think is just E standard but just slightly flat. So maybe they tuned to 430hz or close to that on that one. For the dropped tuning songs it’s the same thing with the HZ setting just dropping the low string to whatever you need to to match the tuning you’re in.

Live I’m assuming it’s the same or maybe they ditched the 425hz for live stuff and just tuned to 440hz, I’m not sure.

I’d also recommend Attilas YouTube pages for tips/tricks on anything Pantera related. He’s has perfected the riffs/solos/techniques.

 

[Sammy J]

Damn, legit teared up a little watching some of these clips. They sound awesome, I hope they tour Australia at some point.

 

[protest]

Pantera is a little tricky with tunings. On the records they usually set a tuner to 425hz and then tuned the guitar. So like on Vulgar you’d set your tuner to 425hz and tune to E. You’ll basically be in-between E and Eb actually. Same thing with Far Beyond Driven. Tune your guitar to D using the 425hz setting and you’ll be flatter than D but sharper than C# and you can play along to I’m Broken, 5 Minutes Alone, etc. CFH I think is just E standard but just slightly flat. So maybe they tuned to 430hz or close to that on that one. For the dropped tuning songs it’s the same thing with the HZ setting just dropping the low string to whatever you need to to match the tuning you’re in.

Live I’m assuming it’s the same or maybe they ditched the 425hz for live stuff and just tuned to 440hz, I’m not sure.

I’d also recommend Attilas YouTube pages for tips/tricks on anything Pantera related. He’s has perfected the riffs/solos/techniques.

Yep, I always heard they tuned down a quarter step from E and then later D, but you probably laid out the actual way they did it lol.

Dropping tuning live isn't uncommon. I think it just stands out more on the older songs that were closer to standard.

But I know SS.org isn't about to complain about playing music in lower tunings, right?.... Right?

 

[cardinal]

I listened to some of a clip of Walk from whatever show they just played and thought it sounded awesome. Surprised Anselmo has anything left but he sounds fine.

 

[Steinmetzify]

Not to be a downer, as obviously this is happening whether I like it or not.

Of the vids I’ve seen 5 Minutes Alone is the closest.

I get that Zakk is going to put his spin on it but fuck all that, he’s playing iconic metal songs so no.

He’s done this for years for Ozzy so he should be familiar. This is not his show. STFU and play them how Dime did or GTFO.

Charlie is doing ok, not great. Rex needs this Ampegs, and Phil is doing ok. As said above 5MA it the best of what I’ve seen, the rest is test material to see if he can still do it.

All that said, it is WEIRD AS FUCK to hear these songs played without Dime and Vinnie; I dunno about y’all, but I can tell just using my ears.

It’s WEIRD.

 

[Steinmetzify]

This takes it for the best of them so far

 

[Jarmake]

It sounded like pantera with Zakk Wylde on guitar. Phil is in a great shape these days. Saw a couple of Down gigs from this summer and he sounded super solid there too.

Got to say I wasn't keeping up any hopes of this being any good, but I'm glad I was wrong.

Chances are good that if Phil went from sounding like trash to sounding surprisingly better, he isn't even vocalizing at all, but rather miming to a track.

Nah, he sounded great with down too and those gigs were pro shot and there is NO way he lip synced those songs. I do firmly believe he has been training for this and he still has it after all these years.

Of he was lip syncing there would be no reason for him to not be perfect on those high pitched screams... Which he isn't in these clips.

Besides it's not like he's suddenly just magically better sounding, he's been slowly getting better during the years. At one point he sounded like dropping a ton of gravel on a rusty metal, but then he started improving. Who knows what he did during covid lockdowns... Maybe he got bored and started missing playing live and decided to give a fuck, then started training again?

 

[Xaeldaren]

Tuning down to C# and not even attempting to sing Cemetary Gates probably helps.

 

[Andromalia]

Of he was lip syncing there would be no reason for him to not be perfect on those high pitched screams...

I'd certainly make sure it wasn't perfect if I was the program manager. Like, trying not to make it too obvious.
Then, people would be surprised at how much 6 months of prep with healthy living, no alcohol etc can do to someone's voice.

 

[SamSam]

If you listen to him speaking in between songs in the clips, you can hear that even speaking, his voice sounds much clearer than it did a few years ago. He must be doing something to mitigate the damage previously done because he used to sound like he drank gravel.

 

[jonsick]

I watched the full video this morning.

Pantera were on point, this is a great recreation, reunion, tribute, whatever you want to call it. I really don't care about the semantics of it. HOWEVER, Zakk Wylde is the weak link in this chain. I know Dimebag's shoes are hard to fill, but really there were a lot of errors on Zakk's part that was just egregious.

It's like, you're in band rehearsal and someone says, "Hey let's jam <insert some well known song by some metal band here, Enter Sandman may be a good example>". And you have that guitarist who doesn't really know the riff, but plays something sort of like it that he thinks is right, but because he's the big knob of the band nobody wants to correct him. And then it just gets out of hand and now you've for some reason put it in a live setlist and you're playing it, but that one riff here is just not correct. You know it, the audience know it, but for whatever reason, correcting him means a big massive ol' drama.

Zakk Wylde is that guy. I've been listening to Pantera a long time, I've been playing guitar a long time, I've been playing Pantera songs a long time. I'm not saying I should be there and not him or whatever silliness, but bloody hell some of those errors were just stupid.

Did nobody say anything? "Hey Zakk... that solo for Walk, it's way off dude... here, check out YouTube for any one of 150 examples of people who are showing you how to play it step by step..." or "5 Minutes Alone, that riff sounds dodgy mate without that pivot off the pedal note... could you run back and check that? I know Rex is covering your ass for all of this, but you could at least try to nail this, we're coming back out as Pantera and we GOTTA nail it!"

"Why do we gotta nail it"

"Cuz there's some muddyfunster on the Internet that has seen two separate Pantera tribute acts in the last decade and he says they pulled off those guitar parts just perfectly!"

I also didn't care too much for the pop-band graphic display in the background, but hey, that's not exactly a huge deal.

 

[p0ke]

Checked some videos on youtube, and damn, the goosebumps! I would've never expected Phil to sound that good again and Charlie's nailing it note for note. Setlist was great too. But yeah, as was said already, Zakk's the weak link here. Hopefully he'll improve as the tour progresses though.

 

[nightflameauto]

Everybody pissing on Phil's vocals miss the Slayer tour where he was the opener? He was sounding pretty decent then and that was pre-COVID. He's had nothing but time on his hands since then to get better.

I'm not gonna bother commenting on the rest of it. Zakk is Zakkin', which we all expected. I see no point in throwing the hissy fit it deserves. So, meh.

 

[ClownShoes]

Phil sounds surprisingly good.

Zakk's a bit rough but thats the first show of many.

He's not using Dime's rig so of course it sounds a bit different. I can't imagine Zakk playing a solid state rig with shit tonnes of gain that's barely controllable.

He said: "I'll be using my guitars, effects, and pedals, a lot of the pedals that Dime actually gave me, and yeah, I'll definitely be using some of Dime's pedals and stuff, too.

“I'm still working out how it'll all come together, but I am looking forward to seeing how it all flows once I do. Dime's tech, Grady, is gonna be coming down too, which is great."