Pantera is coming back to New Orleans for the first time in more than 30 years, and the band isn't showing up alone. On November 20 and 21, the metal giants will headline a two-day, ten-band festival called The Great NOLA Trendkill at LSU New Orleans' Lakefront Arena, marking a homecoming for frontman Phil Anselmo and a citywide celebration of the sludge metal scene he helped build.
As reported by NOLA.com, the festival lineup includes Pantera, Down, Black Label Society, Power Trip, Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar, Pig Destroyer, Eyehategod, Rāde and Herakleion. An artists' presale for tickets went live via Ticketmaster on Tuesday, with general on-sale set for 10 a.m. next Friday, September 11.
The event's name nods directly to Pantera's 1996 album The Great Southern Trendkill, which according to Billboard chart records debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and went on to achieve RIAA platinum status. That record, released via East West Records, is widely regarded as one of the band's darkest and most aggressive efforts, and this November's festival arrives roughly 30 years and six months after the album's release.
A Fractured Album Born Partly in New Orleans
The Great Southern Trendkill has its own tangled New Orleans history. During its production in 1995 and 1996, Anselmo recorded his vocals separately at Trent Reznor's Nothing Studios in New Orleans amid growing band friction, while the rest of Pantera tracked their parts in Texas, according to the same Wikipedia account of the album's production. Pantera itself was formed in Texas in the early 1980s by Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell, per NOLA.com, and the band's 1990 breakthrough Cowboys From Hell and 1991's Vulgar Display of Power eventually elevated the group to arena-headlining status.
Pantera splintered in 2001, and the band's history since has been marked by tragedy. Dimebag Darrell was shot and killed while performing onstage with a different band in 2004, and Vinnie Paul died of heart failure in 2018, NOLA.com reports. Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown resurrected Pantera in late 2022, bringing in Zakk Wylde and Charlie Benante to fill the guitar and drum roles left vacant by the founders' deaths — a lineup change that Hoodline previously reported came with the blessing of the Abbott family estates.
Down's New Album and a Hometown Reunion
Anselmo will pull double duty at the festival, also singing with Down, the New Orleans band he formed with guitarist Pepper Keenan, who additionally co-founded North Carolina's Corrosion of Conformity, giving him a role in two acts on the bill, as Loudwire reported. The Great NOLA Trendkill will double as the release show for Down's Volume V, the band's first new studio album in nearly two decades, due out November 20 via Nuclear Blast — the same day the festival kicks off.
Down's lineup ties together much of the rest of the bill. Kirk Windstein serves as the band's second guitarist while also fronting and playing guitar for Crowbar, and drummer Jimmy Bower plays for Down, Crowbar and Eyehategod simultaneously. That kind of overlap isn't incidental — Down, Crowbar and Eyehategod all have deep ties to New Orleans sludge metal, the downtuned, doom-inflected subgenre that emerged from New Orleans in the late 1980s and 1990s. The festival lineup effectively reassembles that scene's core lineage on a single arena stage.
Housecore Horror Returns After Over a Decade
Beyond the music, Blabbermouth reports that the festival will also bring back Anselmo's Housecore Horror Festival, with dark film screenings and special guests alongside the arena concerts. That detail, paired with Metal Addicts' report that the two-day event is presented by Live Nation, Housecore Records and Housecore Horror, points to a citywide event rather than a single concert — the promotional rollout reportedly began with social media teasers on September 4.
Zakk Wylde, a former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist and current Black Label Society guitarist, will play with both Pantera and Black Label Society across the two nights. He and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante joined Anselmo and Brown in Pantera's current lineup. Pantera supported various dates on Metallica's M72 World Tour, which extended into 2025, including performances at Soldier Field in Chicago on August 9, 2024, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on June 3, 2025. Hoodline detailed Wylde’s dual touring role earlier this month, and the guitarist is also on the bill for Louisville's Louder Than Life festival in mid-September.
A Venue Rebuilt After Katrina
The Lakefront Arena hosting the festival is the site of the two-day concert event.
Also on the bill is Power Trip, the Dallas crossover thrash band. For Anselmo and the rest of the New Orleans contingent on the bill, the November dates will mark Pantera's first appearance in the singer's hometown in more than 30 years — a homecoming three decades in the making, arriving alongside a new Down album and the return of a horror festival Anselmo built himself.
