Pantera’s “The Heaviest Tour of the Summer” Leaves Nothing On the Table at Pine Knob Amphitheatre

CLARKSTON, MI(July 17,2025)- After more than two decades away from Pine Knob Amphitheatre, Pantera finally returned Thursday night for a headlining show that was equal parts tribute, reckoning and release. The band’s current tour, labeled “The Heaviest Tour of the Summer,” has drawn both praise and critique early on, but in front of a sold-out Clarkston crowd, the music did the talking — and it didn’t let up for 90 unrelenting minutes.

This wasn’t the same Pantera that played OZZFest here in 2000.That incarnation of the band was laid to rest alongside the Abbott brothers — guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell in 2004 and drummer Vinnie Paul in 2018. But what took the stage Thursday was far from a hollow shell. Vocalist Philip Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown, the remaining original members, have found solid footing in renowned muscians guitarist Zakk Wylde and drummer Charlie Benante. These aren’t simply replacements; they’re longtime comrades stepping into hallowed territory with the weight of history behind them and the chops to back it up.

The show opened not with a slow build, but with a full-force, melt your face off assault. “Hellbound,” performed for the first time since 2001, kicked things off amid towering plumes of fire and a surge of low-end rumble that seemed to shake the rafters of the open-air Pine Knob. “Everything we do is for Dime and Vinnie,” Anselmo said early in the set and that mission was evident throughout. From visuals of old footage running behind the band to the personal touches on Wylde’s vest and Benante’s bass drums, both emblazoned with the brothers’ faces.

The setlist, though familiar to diehard fans, wasn’t lazily lifted from Spotify’s top streams or the same tired hits recycled in most reunion cash-grabs. In fact, it leaned heavily into some of the band’s lesser-performed material, which offered a satisfying break from the typical festival-format selections. “Goddamn Electric” and “I’ll Cast a Shadow” were both pulled from the 2000 release Reinventing the Steel, and hadn’t been played live in over two decades. Even deeper was the inclusion of “10s” from 1996’s The Great Southern Trendkill, a song that, until this tour, had never been performed live. The atmospheric mood of that track, complete with video clips of Dimebag in his element, provided a reflective pause without slowing the heavy progression of the night.

Wylde’s guitar work is simply impossible to ignore. Rather than attempting to mimic Dimebag’s tone or phrasing, Wylde filtered the material through his own sound — wild, bend-heavy, and controlled chaos. The result was a respectful homage without sounding like a note-for-note copy. Anselmo even ceded a moment to Wylde mid-set, with the frontman pulling off a brief solo himself during “Goddamn Electric,” then joking about needing more “axe” in the monitors. Throughout the evening, Anselmo played the role of seasoned frontman well — both self-aware and surprisingly open-hearted, at one point blowing kisses to the crowd and poking fun at older fans for not keeping up with the lyrics as the younger ones did.

“5 Minutes Alone” and “Strength Beyond Strength” came early and landed hard, with the latter sounding even more feral than its original studio version. “A New Level” followed, and while it ran at a slightly slower pace than years past, the song’s grind and weight felt perfectly suited to the live setting, especially under Wylde’s brutish hands.

“Mouth for War” brought fists in the air, and then came “Becoming,” its chorus shouted back at the stage by thousands. The ending of the track bled into a crushing outro drawn from “Throes of Rejection,” which set up a brutal one-two punch as “I’m Broken” followed, eventually spiraling into a percussive meltdown courtesy of Benante’s extended “By Demons Be Driven” segment.

If there was a lull in Pantera’s performance, it came during “This Love,” where the dynamics of the song didn’t translate quite as cleanly in the mix. The softer moments felt scattered, but once the heavier section kicked in, the crowd’s attention snapped back. Anselmo introduced “I’ll Cast a Shadow” as one of the band’s most aggressive compositions, and it played like it — with guttural vocals and a wall of distortion that swallowed the overflowing front pit whole.

What passed for a finale began with “Cowboys from Hell” with the crowd responded accordingly. There wasn’t much left to prove at that point, but Pantera still had bullets in the chamber. “Walk,” a song that was once ignored by mainstream radio but is now metal canon, prompted a rare instance of audience participation that didn’t feel forced — fists pumping, lyrics shouted in unison. A few members of openers Amon Amarth and Snafu joined in on the chorus, a gesture that felt more like community than gimmick.

Rather than stepping offstage and going through the motions of an encore, the band kept it rolling. “Domination” and “Hollow” were delivered as a stitched-together medley, with Brown’s bass growl and Benante’s footwork combining into something nearly surgical in execution. Anselmo didn’t need to announce what would come next, but he did anyway: “Fucking Hostile.” They didn’t just perform it — they unleashed it like a riot in real time.

As the night wound to a close, there was no grand send-off, confetti or encore ballad. Instead, Anselmo sang a brief, tongue-in-cheek snippet of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and then they were gone.

The reception at Pine Knob stood in contrast to some of the more recent criticism the band has faced this summer. Complaints about repetition and sound imbalance weren’t entirely unfounded — the mix Thursday night was occasionally overwhelmed by drums and bass, and Wylde’s guitar vanished momentarily during “This Love.” But these issues seemed more like momentary technical hurdles than signs of deeper creative stagnation. If anything, the decision to include long-neglected songs and even debut material like “10s” shows that the band is aware of the conversation and willing to stretch beyond the obvious.

Earlier in the night, Amon Amarth brought their Norse-flavored assault to the stage with their usual theatrical flair. Their set was a barrage of coordinated lighting, battlefield visuals, and full-costume Viking warriors wielding swords and shields. Frontman Johan Hegg, never one to shy from the absurd, prompted the audience to sit on the ground and mimic rowing a Viking ship during “Put Your Back into the Oar,” a moment as ridiculous as it was effective. It’s easy to dismiss this band as more pageantry than substance, but that would overlook the razor-sharp precision of drummer Jocke Wallgren and the band’s airtight stage chemistry. Their slot was more than just warm-up; it gave the evening a thundering lead-in to the headliner’s “vulgar display of power.“

By the time the house lights came up, the crowd looked as worn out as the band. Anselmo closed the show by asking, “If and when we come back to this place, who’s comin’?” The response was immediate and thunderous, as if there was ever any doubt.

Whatever name you want to assign to this version of Pantera — legacy project, tribute, revival — the power of these songs hasn’t diminished with time. At Pine Knob, they didn’t just revisit the past. They dragged it into the present, kicked the doors down, and left scorch marks behind………………..John Swider

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