Zakk Wylde Issues Warning to Fans: “Don’t Expect Me to Sound Like DIMEBAG!”

Zakk Wylde has issued a stern warning to PANTERA fans not to expect him to sound like Dimebag Darrell Abbott at the upcoming tribute shows.

“No matter what I do, it’s going to sound like me,” the guitarist told Guitar World in a new interview. “I can practice all I want and stay as faithful as I want, but I am never going to escape that. It’s like if Randy Rhoads were to play Eddie Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’: No matter what he did, it would sound like Randy playing, not Eddie. You’re never going to mistake Randy for Eddie or Eddie for Randy, and it’s the same thing here with me playing Dime’s stuff.”

He added, “I’m gonna have fun with it, knowing that I am not expecting myself to sound like Dime, and no one else should either, which is how it is when I play with Ozzy [Osbourne] or whatever else.”

There’s been some controversy surrounding the announcement that Pantera members Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown will reunite to celebrate the memory of bandmates Dimebag Darrell and his brother, drummer Vinnie Paul, who died in 2004 and 2018, respectively. Wylde – a close friend of Dimebag and long linked with the idea of standing in for him – will appear in South America next month alongside Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante. More dates will follow in 2023.

Fans will recall the dreadful 2016 Dimebash concert event that saw Phil Anselmo use a white supremacist hand sign toward the crowd and yelled “White Power” that caused a huge controversy at the time, which was exactly at the same moment that the confederate flag usage by Anselmo and PANTERA came into question.

“I didn’t invent the damn thing,” Anselmo scowled in anger, when legendary rock journalist Randy “Rocket” Cody questioned the singer about his involvement with the known racist flag.