Down – the band featuring guitarists Kirk Windstein (Crowbar, Eye Am) and fellow guitarist Pepper Keenan (Corrosion Of Conformity), vocalist Phil Anselmo (Pantera), bassist Patrick Bruders (Saint Vitus, ex-Crowbar), and drummer Jimmy Bower (Eyehategod) – will play their first show since 2022 at the Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort And Casino in Mescalero, NM.
In addition to Down's return to the stage, the band has also been working on their first new material in a decade. According to Windstein in a recent interview with Concrete Spew, new Down is starting to sound a lot like old Down – specifically their 1995 debut album NOLA. Windstein later mentions that he hasn't heard anything Anselmo has been working on in terms of vocals, but that there are seven songs in the works.
"It just sounds like Down," said Windstein. "I mean, it sounds refreshing because we haven't done it in so long, gotten together with me and the guys and done it in — fuck — 12 years or something. So it sounds like Down, I think, to me, it sounds more old-school Down. And the reason I say that is I think we got to a point where… Like, the NOLA record is so simple, and it just wrote itself; it was so simple. And that's how this is coming about, which is great.
"We're not overthinking it. We're not trying to make things too complex. Phillip's not trying to write so many lyrics and things. We just kind of got away — I hate to say 'got away', 'cause anything we do is Down, but, to me, we kind of got a little bit… We needed to go back and look at each other and just go, 'Let's just get in a room and do it like we did from the beginning.' And that's what it feels like to me. It's very magical. The ideas and the working together, just bounce off of one another, it's a natural thing."
Down released three very influential albums between 1995 and 2007 – NOLA in 1995, Down II: A Bustle in Your Hedgerow… in 2002, and Down III: Over the Under in 2007 – before dropping two EPs under the collective Down IV moniker in 2012 and 2014.
