Pantera live in Dublin review: Growling vocals, crowd surfing and mosh pits. This gig was worth the wait

Pantera

3Arena, Dublin

★★★★

The curtain drops and the standing section instantly erupts. They’ve waited a long time for this. The Texan metal monsters Pantera are on stage at 3Arena, 32 years after they last played Dublin.

A barefoot Phil Anselmo bestrides the stage, arms outstretched, beckoning the crowd to go nuts. They oblige.

The singer tells the crowd that Dublin was the first place to sell out when the tickets were released for this part-reunion part-tribute tour for the groove-metal pioneers. It’s no wonder, given that they haven’t played here since SFX in 1993.

The band got stuck in Dublin for a few days in September 2001 when their return to the Point was derailed by international travel restrictions days after 9/11. They haven’t been back since, and quite a bit has happened in the meantime.

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They broke up shortly after that, in 2003, after years of strained relationships. A year later, founding member and guitarist Dimebag Darrell was shot dead by a fan while on stage with Damageplan, the band he started after Pantera. His brother, Pantera’s drummer Vinnie Paul, died of heart disease in 2018. Anselmo had fallen out with both of them over the years and endured struggles with substance abuse, almost dying of a heroin overdose in 1996.

In 2022 Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown re-formed the band, with Black Label Society’s Zakk Wylde, also known for being Ozzy Osborne’s lead guitarist, and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante filling in for the late Abbott brothers.

The return hasn’t been without controversy. A number of planned concerts in Germany were cancelled two years ago, after a fan backlash over a 2016 incident in which a drunken Anselmo made a Nazi salute and yelled “white power” at a concert. He later apologised, saying, “Anyone who knows my true nature knows that I don’t believe in any of that.” The band played three gigs in Germany earlier this month.

Whatever you think of Anselmo, he’s still a hell of a frontman. Wearing a “Dis grace yourself” T-shirt and a permanent stank face, he owns the stage with his growling vocals, even if some of the Rob Halford-esque high notes of his youth seem a tough ask at 56. Cemetery Gates is a notable absence from the set list.

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The band’s seminal early-1990s albums A Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven make up the bulk of the set list, with Becoming really kick-starting proceedings. Anselmo conducts the Olés before launching into Five Minutes Alone, which sparks a bunch of mosh pits down below.

Floods' melodic, meandering groove accompanies a slightly overwrought video-montage tribute to Darrell and Paul before its brutal breakdowns and emotional solo outro. Anselmo urges the crowd to “crack their knuckles and sing with their fists” before they nearly take the roof off the arena for Walk, Domination and Cowboys from Hell.

An encore of Yesterday Don’t Mean Shit brings a standing ovation, and while there’s some grumbling about Wylde’s flourishes on guitar, and that it’s not the quite the same without the Abbotts, a raucous crowd go home happy.

Thirty-two years. It was worth the wait.