Quote Originally Posted by Shoden
I don't see why Pantera are considered excellent, the guys are more drunk then Dave Mustaine in 1982 and the the vocals make my ears bleed and go emo. I'm a massive Iron Maiden fan on the other hand but I've been questioning what made Pantera as good as they were said to be, that's why I made this thread to see if there would be any major fans that would say they surpass bands such as Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
Pantera were more about an attitude than their music. They generally appealed to the gutter-snipe, beer-guzzling middle-class suburban white males. Phil (lead singer) was notorious for being smashed out of his face at gigs, and quite often was a very bad performer. I wouldn't say that Pantera are a particularly aggressive band by todays standards. In my opinion there's bands today that do much more sloppy and awful vocals (some kids just shout into a microphone. I saw a band totally ruin a Machine Head song this way, and actually slapped the lead singer for his trouble).

Iron Maiden have been going since lord knows when, and technically speaking they far surpass Pantera. Putting aside the trademark soloing, most of their music is generally well-structured, lyrically flagrant and performed live almost perfectly. If I have one major criticism of them is that they haven't made much of an effort to change their style over the years. Perhaps more seasoned Maiden fans can tell the difference between one Maiden-era song to the next (barring changing vocalists), but to me a 1980s Maiden song sounds very similar to a 2000's Maiden song. At least by the end of Pantera's career they were trying out new sounds (especially ironic if you consider they were a Hair Metal band when they first started out a la KISS).