Pantera

In early 1988, at his first Fort Worth apartment, Anselmo staged an intervention: he put Slayer's "At Dawn They Sleep," off Hell Awaits, on the turntable and made Dimebag Darrell sit through it. By the song's end Dimebag was converted — "Damn, son, that's badass." Anselmo later ranked the band above metal's other giant: "the real kick in the ass was Slayer, not so much Metallica." The riff closing "Domination," he's said, borrows directly from the one before "Raining Blood"'s finale — the moment thrash aggression became Pantera's own.

listen: upstream & heresource: Louder/Classic Rock — The Story Behind ↗share

1986

Raining BloodSlayer

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1990

DominationPantera

listen forCue up "Raining Blood"'s final minute, then "Domination"'s closing section: both collapse into a single chugging, palm-muted riff that repeats itself into a stampede rather than resolving, ending a song by refusing to end it. Anselmo named the connection outright — what you're hearing is Pantera borrowing Slayer's sense of exactly where a song's violence should peak, and how long to hold it there before cutting out.

Rex Brown was ten when an eight-track of Master of Reality "turned me onto Sabbath"; Dimebag went further, crediting guitarist Tony Iommi outright: "Tony Iommi was the pioneer of down-tuning the guitar and playing those mean-ass bluesy satanic riffs... Sabbath were the first bonafide metal band." The debt wasn't just talk: for 1994's Far Beyond Driven, Pantera cut a studio cover of "Planet Caravan," Brown on keyboards and fretless bass, Vinnie Paul on congas, and Dimebag's solo, by Brown's account, recorded in a single take.

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1970

Planet CaravanBlack Sabbath

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1994

Planet CaravanPantera

listen forSabbath's original is hushed and spectral — a whispered, effects-treated vocal wrapped around a vibrato-heavy guitar tone. Pantera's cover keeps that hush intact rather than metaling it up: same brushed pace, same spooked quiet, with Dimebag's guitar solo standing in for the original's guitar-and-vibraphone haze. It's the rare Pantera track that proves the downtuned crunch was a choice, not the only setting the band owned.

Before Anselmo ever joined a band, he came home from school and drilled Judas Priest's live album Unleashed in the East "front to back," teaching himself to sing like Rob Halford without falsetto. That fandom paid off directly: when Halford caught a Pantera club show in Toronto, Anselmo talked him onstage, and Priest invited the still-unknown Texans to open for them in Europe. Vinnie Paul put it plainly — "we were the biggest Priest fans ever." In 1997 the two singers closed the loop: Halford joined Pantera onstage for a full cover of Priest's "Grinder."

listen: upstream & heresource: Loudwire — Watch Pantera Crush Judas Priest Cover Live With Rob Halford (the 1997 Grinder cover) ↗share

1980

GrinderJudas Priest

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1997

GrinderPantera

listen forPriest's original rides a tight, chugging gallop under Halford's clipped bark. On the 1997 tape, Halford sings the same lines over Pantera's thicker, slower-churning groove — same phrasing tics, but the tempo drags and the guitar drops an octave heavier, Dimebag's downtuned crunch retrofitted underneath the very singer who helped teach Anselmo how to phrase a metal vocal in the first place.