Hellyeah-nokkamies Chad Gray: ”Pantera ei tule ikinä tekemään paluuta”

Yhdysvaltalaisen metalliyhtye Hellyeahin laulaja Chad Gray antoi hiljattain Revolver-lehdelle haastattelun, jossa hän mm. kiistää Panteran tekevän ikinä paluuta, vedoten rumpali Vinnie Paul Abbottin kokemukseen veljensä Dimebag Darrelin kuolemasta. Kumpikin heistä tuli tunnetuksi Panteran jäseninä. Gray kertoi seuraavaa Hellyeahin kesäkuussa ilmestyneen ”Unden!able”-albumin nimestä:

”As an artist — or whatever you do — you wanna be respected for your work. But even after all the records we’ve done, there’s still the stigma of PANTERA and MUDVAYNE and everyone wanting the reunions and all this shit, so it was like, ’Is what we’re doing not good enough?” I think it was this unspoken headspace that we had going into this new record, and when I was writing the song ’Be Unden!able’, I came up with the line, ’If you’re tired of being denied, be undeniable and dot your I’s on the bottom.’ And dotting your I’s on the bottom is an exclamation point. So I think the name ’Unden!able’ kind of validates what HELLYEAH does.”

Kysyttäessä vihjaileeko nimi myös sitä, ettei Pantera tule ikinä palaamaan, Gray vastasi:

”Tragically, even if Vinnie wanted to, PANTERA can never do a reunion. You can’t do a reunion without a member of a band. I think that people forget the emotional aspect of this: Vinnie” — who played drums in PANTERA and is now a member of HELLYEAH — watched his brother get tragically murdered in front of him, and what’s on their mind? They wanna see a PANTERA reunion. I’m not trying to call people out as assholes, but people are kind of assholes. They forget that he had to live this.”

Gray otti kantaa myös siihen, voisiko hänen 2010 lopettanut entinen yhtyeensä Mudvayne tehdä joskus paluun:

”With MUDVAYNE, it is what it is. I’m tired of stringing people along. I still talk to the guys; we’re cool. But for many reasons, MUDVAYNE doesn’t exist anymore. Someone posted that ’MUDVAYNE 201?’ thing online [hinting at a possible MUDVAYNE reunion] and they shouldn’t have done that, because it’s fucking with MUDVAYNE fans emotionally, which isn’t fair. I don’t want to wind people up, but who am I to say that can never happen again? But I’m certainly not gonna say that it can.”