Pantera

Thrash Metal4 caught liveOpen on Spotify

No band affected the metal world more so than Pantera during the early to mid-'90s. Beginning with its 1990 album Cowboys From Hell, the post-thrash band put to rest any and all remnants of the '80s metal scene, almost single-handedly demolishing any notion that hair metal, speed metal, power metal, et al., were anything but passé. Sure, a lot of critics point toward Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the subsequent alternative rock explosion as the death knell of '80s-style metal, but you could just as easily point toward Pantera. In fact, most metalheads do exactly that.