It has long been claimed that Exhorder pioneered the angry, 90's post-thrash metal that is often linked to Pantera, as Exhorder were signed to a record label around the same time as Pantera (though Exhorder first released their music on demos in the 1980s, while Pantera was playing glam metal music. Many have claimed that Pantera stole Exhorder's sound, with the resemblance of stripped-down rhythm guitars, heavy double-bass drumming, and almost identical vocals (complimenting the basic American thrash style of the late 80's) However, Exhorder's first album Slaughter in the vatican was more in the vein of pure thrash, and Exhorder did not introduce heavy use of groove metal techniques until they released the Law on March 15, 1992, which still leaves the controversy of which band was the true pioneer of groove metal as Pantera already had two Groove metal releases (Cowboys from hell two years before hand, And Vulgar display of power a month before hand) before Exhorder released The Law, being Exhorder's first groove metal release.

Now onto EXHORDER. Not to stir up any tried-and-true bullshit here, but there’s been a legend approaching 20 years that PANTERA deliberately ripped off EXHORDER. Your vocal style was an obvious influence on Phil Anselmo in the early 90s, and there are even old school pictures of Anselmo proudly wearing an EXHORDER T-shirt. Perhaps it’s time to shitcan this legend, or instill truth to it. Would you defend the claim that PANTERA deliberately ripped off EXHORDER in order to survive the passing of the Glam-rock trend, or argue that PANTERA were slightly influenced by EXHORDER’s style and simply mixed it together with the late DIMEBAG DARRELL's incredible guitar playing?
The thing I hate the most of this topic is just how handcuffed we are to their success. Did they rip us off? Possibly. Was it deliberate? Maybe. Were they influenced by us? Definitely. Did they work a helluva lot harder than we did? Absolutely. Case closed.