Vinnie Paul

Vinnie Paul — Vincent Paul Abbott, born in Texas on 11 March 1964, died on 22 June 2018 — was Pantera's founding drummer and Dimebag Darrell's brother. The relationship between the two is the band's core. They grew up together in a family tied to music — their father was a record producer in Dallas — put Pantera together while still teenagers, and remained inseparable for over twenty years, onstage and off. His style defined half the groove metal equation. While Dimebag wrote syncopated riffs, Vinnie built drum patterns that reinforced exactly those breaks: double kick placed with millimetric precision, snare marking off the expected beat, and a dry touch that made every stroke sound isolated. Without that drumming, his brother's riffs would have had nothing to lean on. He was also the producer of every album of Pantera's classic phase, working the band's sound in the family studio. After the group ended he formed Damageplan with Dimebag and, following his brother's murder in 2004, Hellyeah. He never reconciled with Phil Anselmo. He died in Las Vegas in 2018, aged fifty-four, of heart disease.