What a shock. Wednesday night Darrell “Dimebag” Abbot was shot and killed by a disgruntled fan. For anyone who doesn’t know, Dimebag (lead guitar) and his brother Vinnie (drums) founded Pantera in the early 80’s. Pantera made some of the best metal there is. Most people cite their albums Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display of Power as being their best. They were particularly known for Dimebag’s heavy riffs. A lot of metal bands today have been influenced by their music. Paneta broke up (I think in 2003) over arguments between the brothers and lead singer Phil Anselmo. The brothers went on to form the band Damageplan who released their first album earlier this year.
The details are still sketchy, but it seems as though 25 year old Nathan Gale jumped on stage as Damageplan was playing the first song in their set. Apparently Gale shouted something at Dimebag, possibly blaming him for the breakup of Pantera who Gale apparently loved dearly. It sounds as though Dimebag was shot in the head 5 or 6 times with some accounts saying Gale (who seems to be a marine and semi-pro football player at some point) had Dimebag in a headlock when this happened. A bouncer (or stagehand) pulled gale off of him, but it was too late and he was killed as well. Gale went on to shoot others in the crowd with his 9mm beretta. 4 or 5 people were killed in all before officer James D. Niggemeyer arrived and fired one shot, killing Gale.
Most major news outlets aren’t reporting anyone else in the band as being killed, but I’ve heard rumors that the lead singer was killed as well. It was reported that Vinnie fell over after the shooting began and it is possible he was shot in the leg, but this is not clear either.
Damageplan was scheduled to play at the The Machine Shop on Thursday night. This is the place where we saw Uncle Kracker play back in October. It was actually a show I thought I might go to if it weren’t for the fact that I’m out of vacation time for the year. The club closed for the night and offered refunds but said they were going to donate any money not refunded in 30 days to the band. The weird thing here too is that when we saw Kracker there were no metal detectors or patdowns or anything. All they had was two bouncers on either side of the stage. At one point even the one on our side left to help with a scuffle on the other. I didn’t get the impression that that was the case in this place though. It sounds like they even had metal detectors. There’s no way to truly be secure though. Many people in the metal community seem to agree that it’s just an isolated, freak incident.
Some people have said we need better gun control because of this, but I don’t think that would make any difference. Guns could still be gotten and realistically, even though me may not have killed as many people, even if he had just a knife he still would have killed Dimebag.
On another erie note, John Lenon was murdered 24 years ago to the day.
Both Pantera.com and Damageplan.com (features the above picture) have visual tributes to Dimebag posted. The Machine Shop’s message board also has more information. Google news was indexing as many at 1600 (and climbing) articles the last time I checked. This is huge number and it’s truly impressive how widely this is being covered.
This is a real shame. Not only was he a great guitar player, but by all accounts of anyone who had met him he was a great guy as well. Many described him as being friendly and down to earth. He was 38 years old.
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