Two Spirit

I've rediscovered my love for Pantera when I had some money in my iTunes account and bought two of their later albums. While I was listening to them, I began wondering what they would be like today if they had never broken up.

Pantera is one of those rare bands that I felt got better and better with each album. Everyone praises the **** out of Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display of Power, and while those are great albums, I feel that they were just the start. Far Beyond Driven and The Great Southern Trendkill are some of the heaviest metal albums I've ever heard, and Reinventing the Steel is up there in quality as well.

Three years after that last album, they broke up in 2003 over internal band conflicts, and everyone went off to do their own side projects. Most notable of these was Dimebag and Vinnie going off to form Damageplan. However, less than a year after their first album, the tragic shooting of Dimebag occurred, forever preventing a reunion.

Even though they broke up before Dimebag's death, I do sometimes wonder what they would be like had they stuck it out and stayed together. Phil was always very anti-mainstream when it came to the music industry, especially during the later albums, so he would probably be even more pissed off at the trends today, resulting in some very angry music. Then again, they could have aged horribly and become extremely played out and generic. It really could have gone either way. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part that I really wish they were still together.

What do you think?