Following this week’s announcement that Pantera will reunite for its first tour since 2003, Billboard reports that guitarist Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society) and drummer Charlie Benante (Anthrax) will fill out the roster alongside surviving members Phil Anselmo (vocals) and Rex Brown (bass). The reported tour is set to take place in 2023 and feature major festivals and solo headlining performances across North America and Europe.
Citing a source close to the band, Billboard states that Wylde and Benante will respectively take the places of founding Pantera brothers Darell “Dimebag” Abbott (guitar) and Vincent “Vinnie Paul” Abbott (drums). The estates for the late musicians who started Pantera in 1981 in Arlington, TX and helmed the band until its breakup in 2003 have reportedly green-lit the lineup of new musicians in addition to Anselmo and Brown.
Initial news of the tour, also broken by Billboard, pointed to comments Brown made last year that any possible Pantera reunion tour would not include Wylde. The guitarist has been a rumored stand-in for Dimebag—who was murdered onstage in Columbus, OH in 2004 while performing with Damageplan—since 2014 when he and Anselmo performed Pantera’s “I’m Broken” during Down’s tour with Black Label Society. Wylde is currently scheduled to join the Ozman on the twice-delayed No More Tours 2 outing in Europe from early May through mid-June.
Benante’s relationship with the Abbotts dates back to 1985 when Pantera opened for Anthrax in Texas, a memory the drummer recalled to SiriusXM the day after Vinnie Paul’s death in 2018 from heart disease.
“We’ve known those guys since 1985, and just the two of them, Darrell and Vinnie, after you met those two, it was like you had a friend in Texas, both of them, and they just made the experience so much better, and you immediately bonded,” Benante said.