Setlist + Video From Pantera’s Final Show With Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell
Pyro, multiple special guests and a pulverizing 11-song setlist is what fans saw on stage when Pantera played Beast Feast in Yokohama, Japan on Aug. 26, 2001.
But what was happening off stage was just as, if not more, combustable as that night's show.
Pantera Members Started To Become Estranged From Each Other
Not even the members Pantera knew this would be the final time Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell would be part of the band, but that doesn't mean things weren't already headed in that direction.
In Revovler's recap of the show, the outlet noted the brothers had "become increasingly estranged from singer Phil Anselmo since he developed a crippling heroin addiction that led to him overdosing backstage after a 1996 hometown show in Dallas."
Revolver said that tension had started to dissipate while the band recorded 2000's Reinventing the Steel only to come back once they went back out on tour.
Pantera's touring schedule had been fairly light in the years leading up to the turn of the century. Gone were the years of playing more than 100 shows in a calendar year.
READ MORE: Ticket Stub From Dimebag Darrell's Final Show Selling For $15K
Their 2001 tour plans would include more than 60 dates for the first time in four years. The Beast Feast set was their 85th show for the year, a far cry from the 57 gigs they played in 2000.
"It had gotten to the point that nobody wanted to be around Phil anymore. Nobody," Pantera's manager, Walter O'Brien, said in bassist Rex Brown's memoir Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera. "And that started affecting everybody to the point that Rex, Dime, and Vinnie were getting loaded because they didn't want to deal with what's going on, and at one point it looked like we were going to have three buses on the road – which the budget simply wouldn't have supported."
Brown would go on to say in the book that Dime eventually was "starting to hate being around his own brother" on the tour.
"So while the shows were good, the animosity backstage left something to be desired," he wrote.
Pantera's Final Show With Vinnie Paul and Dimebag
The Aug. 26, 2001 show in Japan was Pantera's final stop on the Extreme Steel Tour. The band had already survived a North America arena tour throughout June and July with Slayer, Static-X, Skrape and Morbid Angel before heading to Japan.
The tour was Pantera's return to the road after having to scrap plans for fall/winter dates the previous year due to Anselmo breaking two ribs in what Billboard said was an "accidental fall."
The setlist for the Yokohama show mostly followed what the band had done during previous Extreme Steel Tour stops, but with a few less songs to account for the shortened festival stage time.
Pantera opened with "Hellbound," the first track off Reinventing the Steel, before heading into "5 Minutes Alone."
Slayer's Kerry King joined the band on stage for "Fuckling Hostile." King had made similar appearances on previous tour dates.
Pantera also welcomed Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard to the stage, playing "Walk" during a one-song encore.
Pantera Setlist – Aug. 26, 2001
- Hellbound
- 5 Minutes Alone
- Goddamn Electric
- War Nerve
- Mouth for War
- Becoming
- Revolution Is My Name
- Fucking Hostile (with Kerry King)
- This Love
- Cowboys From Hell
- Walk (with Evan Seinfeld)
The Most Played Song Live Off Each Pantera Album
Gallery Credit: Philip Trapp
The Least Played Song Live Off Each Pantera Album
Gallery Credit: Philip Trapp