10 Most Important Hard Rock Bands Of The 90s

As the '90s wore on, the entire genre of metal was going to be in for a rough ride. It's easy to see why the hair metal side of the spectrum died in the wake of grunge, but the thrash scene also seemed to fall by the wayside as well, with only the heavy hitters like Megadeth and Metallica surviving. For all of the alternative scene filling out MTV though, Pantera rose to prominence more than willing to fly the flag for metal in the '90s.

Then again, it's difficult to even categorize what style of metal Pantera truly belong in. While you can definitely hear traces of the thrash scene in some of their licks, the emphasis they had on growling vocals and the punishing riffs put them somewhere in the realm of groove metal around the same time. Whatever you wanted to call it, you couldn't escape it if you tried, with songs like Walk and Cowboys From Hell lodging themselves into many a metalhead's brain from the first moment that they came on.

Pantera also don't get nearly enough credit for their contribution to the nu metal scene. They may not have had a rapper to work with or anything, but their insistence on the groove in most of their songs would go on to be the mission statement of nu metal acts, focusing less on flashiness and more on how hard you could bang your head to the beat. Even with years in the rearview, there is no rust on any of these licks for a damn good reason.