12 Bands Like Pantera, And Who Got There First

What Actually Makes a Riff Sound Like Pantera

Groove metal is thrash that stopped running. Where thrash rides continuous fast picking, groove metal takes the same aggression and puts it on a syncopated mid-tempo riff with space between the hits, so the weight lands on the silence as much as the note.

The Pantera version of it has four identifiable parts. Dimebag Darrell's riffing sat between thrash precision and a blues-derived bend, which is why his leads sound like Texas rather than the Bay Area. Vinnie Paul's drumming locked the kick tightly to the guitar rather than driving over it, which is what makes the riffs feel heavy rather than fast. Phil Anselmo's delivery moved between a high, strained shout and a low bark, mostly abandoning the falsetto of the earlier records. And the production was dry: very little reverb, guitars pushed forward, nothing smoothing the edges.

Any band matching three of those four sits in this article. They are grouped by how they connect rather than by rank, because the connections turn out to be more interesting than an ordering.

The Argument: Who Got There First

The most persistent question in this genre, and one that forum threads argue and listicles avoid, is whether Pantera invented groove metal or arrived second.

Exhorder, from New Orleans, released Slaughter in the Vatican on Roadrunner in 1990. That much is uncontested. What complicates it is that a demo of the same name, containing seven of the album's eight songs, circulated in 1987. In 1987 Pantera were still four albums into a glam metal career, and Cowboys from Hell, the record where they abandoned it, did not arrive until 24 July 1990.

That timeline is why the accusation exists. It is not, however, proof of anything, and the honest position is that nobody has produced evidence of theft. Bands in adjacent scenes arriving at similar ideas within a few years of each other is the normal way genres form, and both bands were working from the same thrash foundations. What can be said plainly: Exhorder were playing this before Pantera were, and they never got the credit or the sales. Anyone who likes Vulgar Display of Power and has not heard Slaughter in the Vatican is missing the more obscure half of the story.

Start with: Slaughter in the Vatican (1990)

The Direct Line: Bands With Pantera Members

Damageplan

Formed in 2003 by Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul after Pantera's breakup, which lasted from November 2003 until the band reformed in July 2022. This is the closest thing to more Pantera that exists, because half of the rhythm section and all of the guitar is the same. The project ended when Dimebag was killed in 2004.

Start with: New Found Power (2004)

Down

Phil Anselmo's other band, formed in New Orleans in 1991 and drawing its lineup from Corrosion of Conformity and Crowbar as well as Pantera. NOLA arrived on 19 September 1995 and went platinum. It is slower and heavier than Pantera, closer to doom and Southern rock than to thrash, and it is where Anselmo's voice does things Pantera never asked of it.

Start with: NOLA (1995)

The Groove Metal Core

Machine Head

Burn My Eyes landed on 9 August 1994 and became Roadrunner's biggest-selling debut. Robb Flynn has been open that the record drew on Pantera alongside Biohazard and Sepultura's Chaos A.D., which makes this the most direct descendant on the list rather than a coincidental match.

Start with: Burn My Eyes (1994)

Lamb of God

Formed in 1994 as Burn the Priest. Faster and more technical than Pantera, with Randy Blythe working a harsher register than Anselmo, but the riff construction is straight out of the same book. The most commonly given answer to this question, and a fair one.

Start with: Ashes of the Wake (2004)

Sepultura

Brazilian, and one of the few bands that shaped groove metal in parallel rather than downstream. Chaos A.D. slowed thrash into something percussive and tribal at almost exactly the moment Pantera were doing their own version of it. Max Cavalera's later project Soulfly continues the same instinct.

Start with: Chaos A.D. (1993)

DevilDriver

Dez Fafara's band after Coal Chamber, and the most straightforwardly groove-driven act of the 2000s. Less blues in the guitar than Pantera, more double kick underneath, but the mid-tempo weight is the same.

Start with: The Fury of Our Maker's Hand (2005)

Mudvayne

Technical to the point of being progressive, with bass playing that carries melody rather than following the guitar. Filed as nu metal at the time, which undersold them. The groove is real and the musicianship is closer to Pantera than the label suggested.

Start with: L.D. 50 (2000)

The New Orleans Branch

A large share of this list traces back to one city. Down drew from three New Orleans bands, and Exhorder came from the same scene. If Pantera are from Texas, groove metal's other half is from Louisiana.

Crowbar

Kirk Windstein's band, and the slowest thing here by a distance. Sludge rather than groove, but the riff weight and the refusal to hurry are recognisably from the same water. Windstein also played in Down.

Start with: Odd Fellows Rest (1998)

Corrosion of Conformity

Began as hardcore punk and arrived at Southern metal by the mid-nineties. Pepper Keenan's other band, and the most melodic entry here. If the Pantera songs you keep returning to are the slower Southern ones, start here.

Start with: Deliverance (1994)

Acid Bath

The strangest band on this list and the one most worth discovering. New Orleans sludge with genuine songwriting underneath the ugliness, and a vocalist who moves between clean and savage without it sounding like a device. Nothing else sounds quite like them.

Start with: When the Kite String Pops (1994)

Hatebreed

Hardcore rather than metal, and included because the overlap in audience is close to total. The wider lineage it belongs to is traced in our hardcore and metalcore guide. Short songs, no solos, built entirely around the breakdown. Where Pantera made you nod, this makes you move.

Start with: Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire (1997)

Where This Site's Artist Fits

Disclosure: this site belongs to the team behind Daemon Grey, a solo industrial goth metal artist from Brantford, Ontario. He does not sound like Pantera, and he is not on the list above. He appears here because of every article we could have written, this is the one where the connection is most personal.

Pantera is the reason he plays music at all. His first band, a high-school four-piece called Northern Steel, was built on them. He has said he liked that the lineup had brothers in it, "just like Dime and Vinnie in Pantera".

Asked which records he genuinely wore out, as opposed to the polite influences list every artist gives, the answer was one album:

If I had to pick one album I truly burned through, it would be Reinventing the Steel by Pantera.

The connection runs into the vocals as well, which is where it gets unexpected. Daemon is filed as goth and industrial, and he is candid that he did not come up on either genre. The gothic quality in his delivery comes from somewhere else entirely:

As for my vocal style, a lot of my goth influences do come from Phil Anselmo.

It shows most clearly on the 17 EP (2025), his hardcore record, which he describes as drawing on Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven alongside early Hatebreed and Madball. That EP, and the rest of the catalogue broken down song by song, is the closest point of contact between this site's artist and this list, and the honest recommendation if you arrived here from Pantera.

All Twelve Compared

Frequently Asked Questions

What band sounds most like Pantera?

Damageplan, because it was Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul continuing after Pantera broke up. For a band without shared members, Machine Head's Burn My Eyes is the closest, and Robb Flynn has acknowledged Pantera as an influence on it.

Did Exhorder invent groove metal before Pantera?

The timeline is genuinely awkward: Exhorder's Slaughter in the Vatican demo circulated in 1987 with most of the eventual album on it, while Pantera were still a glam band until Cowboys from Hell in 1990. No evidence of theft has ever surfaced, and both worked from the same thrash roots, but Exhorder got there first and never got the credit.

What was Pantera's last album?

Reinventing the Steel, released 21 March 2000 and produced by Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell. It was their ninth studio album and the last with the Abbott brothers, who died in 2004 and 2018.

Is groove metal the same as thrash?

No. Groove metal takes thrash aggression and slows it to a syncopated mid-tempo, so weight comes from the space between riffs rather than from speed.

What Pantera album should I start with?

Cowboys from Hell (1990) for the moment the sound arrived, or Vulgar Display of Power (1992) for the most concentrated version of it.

Sources