Rex Brown has been pretty vocal about his feelings on Pantera's comeback (tribute shows, reunion – whatever you wanna call it). Brown recently clarified that he feels Pantera in 2024 isn't a tribute band, and remained oddly quiet on the topic of a potential new album.
Now in a new interview with American Musical Supply, Brown elaborated on recruiting Charlie Benante and Zakk Wylde, and discussed all the work that he and Benante put into Pantera's live show before hitting the stage for the first time.
"This is a completely different thing, man. We have Charlie and Zakk now, and they're just — number one, they've been great friends of ours for all these years. We get along extra super cool. Charlie and I went down, probably put about 80, 100 hours on tape of all the songs we were gonna do for the set, and others that we would want to do. Charlie and I worked on this for six months before we ever got into a rehearsal room. That's just how good friends we are.
"Charlie has been one of my best friends for years. So, this is another band. It's hard to fill the shoes of the brothers. At the same time, this has become a really tight unit. And Zakk just puts the extra… Dime was a very unique guitar player, and he was my best friend, and it's good to see those boys up on the screens and with us. And that's what this is about tonight, for me."
Brown then talked about keeping Pantera's legacy in tact, noting that he feels the band's presence are more for the memory of the band and the fans themselves. Which Pantera has certainly gotten across in terms of messaging – the whole "for the brothers" slogan has been front and center this whole time, at least during the shows.
"There's many ways that we wanna keep this legacy alive, 'cause the music is still played all over. We have a whole new generation of fans that, they probably wouldn't have heard this stuff if we weren't playing out here playing these shows. And so, that generation of fans — let's say the 15-to-18-year-old kids that come out — they'll shortly have children, and that keeps that new generation alive. And Phillip even says it in the set, the parents of the '90s, which I'm a parent of the '90s, it's a very important statement in the set because it's about the gratitude.
He continued: "We're not doing this for ourselves; we're doing it for the name and the brand Pantera. And by God, this music needs to be heard again. It does. It needed to for a long fucking time. And that's what we're here doing tonight… It's just wonderful to be able to do this and pay homage to my music, the riffs that I wrote, or the riffs that Dime wrote, or the patterns that Vinnie played, and for what Phil came up with — tremendous impact on this music."
