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This show hit me pretty hard on multiple levels and I won’t even bother trying to cover every one of them.
When I bought my ticket, it was for one of the higher levels, 3-4 levels up and behind FOH, angled towards the stage. For some reason, all the ushers I showed my ticket to kept sending me towards the floor until I was eventually on the floor. Those tickets were all $500 when I was looking! I only spent $175 on mine!
The first time I ever saw LoG was at this same venue on the Gigantour nearly 18 years ago. It dawned on me on the way to the show that both Pantera and LoG were gateway bands for me. Pantera was my gateway into metal and LoG was my gateway to extreme metal. Both bands had an impact that changed my direction as a musician.
LoG is so fucking consistent you’d swear they’ve been robots onstage their entire career. I can’t imagine the impact Randy’s knees have taken after jumping off those drum risers as long as he’s been doing it. I was surprised to see Mark jumping around quite a bit, clearly sobriety is giving him some energy!
But Pantera…..
First off, there is NO doubt what these shows are about when you’re there. For all the people running their mouths about it being disrespectful to Dime and Vinnie, you’d never get that idea at the show. The amount of video they play of those guys and hearing the audience light up every single time removes any doubt. Even if the 4 dudes on that stage don’t give a fuck about those two guys, there were 30,000 people in that arena last night who went apeshit for them and celebrated the absolute badassery they displayed their entire careers.
- A New Level
- Mouth for War
- Strength Beyond Strength
- Becoming
(with "Throes of Rejection" outro) - I'm Broken
(with "By Demons Be Driven" outro) - Suicide Note Pt. II
- 5 Minutes Alone
- This Love
- Floods
(First time live since May 20th, 2001) - Walk
- Domination / Hollow
- Cowboys From Hell
- Encore:
- Fucking Hostile
They did line check on the kit before Pantera came out and it was the loudest fucking kick drum I’ve ever heard in my life. The sound of a kick that metal bands have attempted to recreate for decades, hitting your entire body at 120dB. I was actually a little concerned because I didn’t bring ear plugs, but then thought “You’re not wearing fucking earplugs at a fucking Pantera show”
I only got to see Pantera twice back in the day, both in ‘01. In a smaller and bigger arena than I saw them in last night. This is the aspect that hit me the hardest- I have not been in an arena show since that last Pantera show where I’ve heard an audience scream that loud, screaming over the ridiculously loud PA system, I haven’t heard a snare echo off an arena walls like that since ‘01. I haven’t felt a collective of thousands of people getting off on the exact same thing since that time. And I‘ve been to PLENTY of shows since then. it’s just that all the arena shows in the last 20 years, in metal, have become rolling festival shows, so no one is really there JUST for the headliner, they’re just hanging out after the 5 bands they wanted to see left.
The second they broke into “A New Level” the waterworks started. Tears just flowing down my face faster than I could wipe ‘em away so I stopped trying and just took it all in. That happened a few times throughout the set, but when they started playing “Floods”, I actually had to snap myself into reality to think “Are they really going to play this??!?!” While there’s Dime solos I prefer, for some reason this has been his “Comfortably Numb” solo and Zakk fucking NAILED it.
Zakk was spot on for about 90%-95% of the night. He’s definitely put some time into the solos. Only in the solos where Dime would go off a bit live is Zakk doing his own thing. My only real gripe about him is that his tone is the only thing taking away from it all. It’s just not cutting enough and it’s not a PA/sound guy thing, just too much distortion and not enough mids/clarity. If they were tuned up it’d probably be great, but downtuned like that it’s a bit of a mess. That’s also hypercritical gear nerd me critiquing.
Phil was SPOT FUCKING ON. He’s been consistent since they started this and it’s really fucking cool seeing him take this as seriously as he is. Rex sounded great and I was happy to see him playing Spector’s the whole night. You can’t play fucking Pantera songs with a Firebird bass and Boogie amps. He still had the Boogies instead of Ampegs but the Spector’s at least did the Spector thing. As much as I dislike Rex, that bass tone is such a huge part of the Pantera sound.
Charlie killed it, as expected. There’s ONE part in “Suicide note PT II” he doesn’t play the way Vinnie did it and it drives me fucking nuts. It’s ONE kick drum hit he misses and I’m sure 99.8% of the audience doesn’t catch it aside from the drummers, but damnit it’s a big one! It makes that particular riff/section groove so much!
I’m not sure if they’re playing to a click or not, there are times I get the idea they are, where you’d expect the energy of a live show to kick up the notch, but that could just be Charlie being a seasoned drummer. Lamb Of God slowed couple songs down, I know they don’t play to a click and have to assume that’s just experience from getting their music audible in an arenas like that, tempos above 210bpm can get mushy in arenas.
I can’t wait to see this again in a fucking stadium. If they play “Floods” then…..to hear that song in a stadium setting, I might need my friends to hold me up.
Whole show here-
