Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Tvornica kulture / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: 25.06.2013
Attendance: 1500
We almost had them, but they slipped through our fingers. The American southern/sludge/stoner metal giants Down were originally supposed to play Ljubljana’s Kino Šiška on the eve of our Statehood Day, but they canceled just a few weeks before the show citing »logistical problems« – probably there wasn’t enough homemade moonshine for the whole band, hehe. So the American supergroup rolled into the Croatian capital a day later instead, and legendary frontman Phil Anselmo, thirteen years on (with a club show – he leveled Kodeljevo with Pantera in May 2000 and played Metalcamp with Down in 2009), didn’t come back to our halls but instead played Zagreb for the first time, together with his buddies from Crowbar, Corrosion of Conformity and Eyehategod.
Given the reputation of the band and its members, who are basically all pioneers of American sludge and southern metal, a big turnout was expected, but Tvornica kulture was probably only that jam-packed a few days earlier, when thrash metal heavyweights Slayer shook its foundations. The show, originally announced for nine o’clock, started with a forty-five-minute delay. At a quarter to ten, with us packed into the hall like we’d been tightly wrapped in a rolled-up cigarette paper, the New Orleans sludge heroes marched onto the stage to deafening cheers – Kirk Windstein (Crowbar, Kingdom of Sorrow), Pepper Keenan (Corrosion of Conformity), Jimmy Bower (Eyehategod), Pat Bruders (Crowbar) and the great Phil Anselmo, who needs no special introduction.
Anselmo greeted the crowd, then tore into the band’s filthy bluesy ode to the American South, Eyes of the South. The mighty sludge riffs of the Windstein/Keenan guitar duo roared and raged out of a stack of Orange amps like Hurricane Katrina, and the band wowed us from the very first moment with a top-notch, high-energy performance. Down were loud, feisty and in great spirits, and the loud crowd undoubtedly gave them wings too, obeying Anselmo’s every command and following the band keenly and constantly. The electrified atmosphere pushed the temperature in Tvornica so high that you sweated just standing still, and while Šiška would’ve been ideal in that respect, it would have had a hard time matching the reaction of the Croatian crowd. Anselmo and his southern gang walked through everything from the debut NOLA to the current release Down IV, Part I: The Purple EP, of which they (sadly) played only the fantastic, stoned retro-doom EP track Witchtripper. Mostly, though, they stuck to the brilliant 1995 debut and, surprisingly, ignored the album Down III: Over the Under completely.
Still, Down didn’t let us catch our breath, because thanks to the excellent and above all LOUD sound, they kept stomping on us with earthquake riffs from under the fingers of the guitar duo, »Geezer Butler worship« bass lines from Pat Bruders, who plays bass with his fingers (and in that respect fits the Down whole much better than Rex Brown, who recently left the band – reputation notwithstanding), and the thundering of Bower’s drums, which cracked like the snapping jaws of a Mississippi crocodile. Anselmo’s vocals held up exceptionally well too: aggressive, raw, commanding, yet at the same time »redneck«-seductive and sensual in that southern way. Somewhere in the middle of the show, Anselmo asked the fired-up crowd how they were feeling, and they naturally answered with a roar, whereupon Phil explained to the band that this is called a »fan base«, and Down improvised a jam out of nothing called Croatian Fan Base with the lyrics »Croatian Fan Base/Smokes weed/Drinks beer/Says Fuck You!«
The outstanding song selection was as thrilling as the performance itself – the weed-smoke-cured, grooving riffs of the superb crusher Lifer were dedicated to the eternal Dimebag, and the Black Sabbath-style funereal Lysergik Funeral Procession to the recently departed Jeff Hanneman. Down floated us down the Mississippi delta with Ghosts Along the Mississippi, and for the rest of the main set buried us in the unbelievable New Orleans Is a Dying Whore and served up Cajun cooking with Temptation’s Wings, Losing All and Underneath Everything.
The intensity of the show hit its real peak – even though it was already hard to believe things could get any better or hotter – with a trio of the biggest hits of the band’s career. The crowd followed their mad leader Anselmo ever more faithfully, and he held Tvornica in the palm of his hand with no trouble until the very end. Phil’s charisma knows no limits, and he was more than solid vocally too, delivering some unforgettable moments – in the style of Gerre from Tankard banging on his little boiler, Anselmo whacked himself on the head with the microphone, showed off astonishing skills in making his beer belly ripple, and constantly interacted with all the other members, proving that there’s a real bond of southern brothers between them. The band got everything thrown onto the stage, from T-shirts and bras (Bower put one on) to bags of singing grass, which Down didn’t spare for long. Down hit the boiling point in the encore with the hymn to the singing grass, Hail the Leaf, and even more so with the bluesy hit Stone the Crow, whose unforgettable chorus the crowd drowned out even over the ultra-loud band. As expected, Down buried us in a cloud of smoke to close with Bury Me In Smoke, during which the guys swapped instruments, Anselmo grabbed Bruders’ bass, and Windstein, with his suffering, growling vocals, wrapped up an unforgettable show that will without a doubt go down as one of the best live moments of this year!
Setlist
1. Eyes of the South
2. Witchtripper
3. There’s Something On My Side
4. Lifer
5. Lysergik Funeral Procession
6. Ghosts Along the Mississippi
7. Pillars of Eternity
8. New Orleans Is a Dying Whore
9. Temptation’s Wings
10. Losing All
11. Underneath Everything
— encore —
12. Hail the Leaf
13. Stone the Crow
14. Bury Me In Smoke
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