Charlie Benante Wants Live Album to Document Current Pantera Touring Lineup

Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante has been performing Pantera's catalog alongside Phil Anselmo, Rex Brown, and Zakk Wylde since July 2022, and he wants a live album to preserve what this particular lineup built.

"I would love to release a live album of this lineup so we can document what we did and just have it," the 63-year-old said in a recent Hot Metal interview. The statement is as pragmatic as it is sentimental. The touring unit carries a limited schedule, a few shows this summer and possibly more in 2027, and new studio material is nowhere close. "I mean there was some talk – but nothing really," Benante said when asked directly. A live recording would be the most concrete artifact this version of the band could leave behind.

For drummers, that artifact would matter in ways a reissue or studio tribute release never could. Vinnie Paul, who died of heart disease in 2018, built the rhythmic identity of records like "Vulgar Display of Power" and "Far Beyond Driven" around a piston-tight kick-drum feel, a deep snare voice, and grooves that sound deceptively straightforward until you try to replicate them. Benante, coming from Anthrax's thrash framework, brings a different vocabulary to that material in a live room. A recording would expose exactly how he handles the translation: his tempo readings, his pocket depth in the half-time passages, the sheer physicality he applies to parts Paul originated.

If this album materializes, specific sections belong on every drummer's listening checklist. The opening tom cascade in "Mouth for War" is one of the most-studied entry points in heavy metal drumming; how Benante navigates that passage under live conditions would be the first thing to queue up. "Domination" contains extended mid-section builds where Vinnie Paul maintained tension across multiple minutes, and a live recording would capture whether Benante's stamina and pocket hold through the same stretch. "Cowboys from Hell" is the broadest test of feel and kick-drum placement, where live adrenaline either sharpens or blurs precision; the outro groove alone is a landmark. "Walk" is where overplaying gets punished hardest: a deep, mid-tempo pocket that demands restraint, and Benante's interpretation of it would be the clearest single data point between his approach and the original.

The backdrop for all of this is painful. Original guitarist Darrell "Dimebag" Abbott was murdered in 2004, and his brother Vinnie Paul's death from heart disease in 2018 closed the door on any reunion of the original four. The current lineup, with Zakk Wylde holding the guitar role (Wylde refers to the project as "Pantera Celebration" in his own interviews), has drawn skepticism from fans who view the name and legacy as inseparable from the Abbott brothers.

Benante addressed that resistance directly: "I think in the beginning of the whole thing there were naysayers and all I would say is 'just come'. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, OK. You never have to come again." His observation about the actual audiences reframed the argument: fans were bringing their children, younger listeners who never saw the original lineup. "This isn't the same," he acknowledged. "Dime and Vinnie are not there but we are just playing these songs that need to be played again and it's giving people smiles on their faces again and it's a great thing."

With only a handful of confirmed summer dates and uncertain plans beyond that, the window for capturing this lineup at its peak is narrow. A live album would close that window on something worth preserving.