Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Down
Label: Elektra Entertainment Records
Release: 1995
Length: 56:33
Rating: 5/5
Right at the start of ’91, the chemistry between the aggressive talent of Pantera’s main lyricist and vocal alter ego, the nonchalant but undeniably gifted Phil Anselmo, clicked with the gifted C.O.C. founder Pepper Keenan. They were joined by two members of Crowbar, guitarist Kirk Windstein and bassist Todd Strange, and the cherry on top was Eyehategod’s phenomenal drummer Jimmy Bower. A story of success and total stoned disconnection begins to be written, where a string of hard-hitting songs is born out of the smoke of burned-down joints, drawing their energy and message straight from the sound of Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus. The old buddies first take a breather from their main creative axes – the home bands that had driven them to the very edge of their capabilities, yet that were also where their daily bread came from. Four years after the anonymous safe haven of an intoxicated garage, word of a new big lineup, one of the first metal supergroups of the outgoing millennium, spreads through the public. Out of a seed of creative fever, straight from the center and the heart chakra, comes the announcement of a record that had more than a few metal fans drooling sincere rivers of anticipation and curiosity – and every last high expectation was fulfilled with the release of an ode to the city of New Orleans, the album NOLA.
Behind the acronym NOLA lies the very story of this unfortunate city in the southern US, at whose heart the story of countless talents of Cajun-epic-soaked metal was born. If on one side Pantera launched every kind of missile of anger, rage and diluted melodicism into the musical cosmos, the main essence of this encounter with Anselmo’s spectrum reached back to an earlier period of his writing, when melodic images were mostly forming in the cerebral wiring. NOLA carries the cult of singing about forbidden substances into the stratosphere, and the metal lines, softened by cannabis, are melancholic but sinfully sweet and full. Up front is the recognizable undertone of Keenan’s C.O.C. guitar wizardry, drenched in feel. Keenan doesn’t fire off fast-fingered solos and doesn’t string riffs together for no reason, and his sense of minimalist aesthetics melts together with Anselmo’s feel for sensual spiritual outpourings of pure soul and talent into a monumental form you simply can’t resist. The unique chemistry between the two main minds gives birth to a record packed with music that glows with the finest, noblest shine even today. And that’s because the band created something wholly original, unconnected to any previous product or project.
Down are anything but a surrogate for musical dissatisfaction in their home bands – the debut alone holds a full thirteen works of art that take you, without a moment of boredom, on a journey across the rainbow fields of an imaginary world of swampy idyll, while the slowed-down tempo of the shamanic playing with your feelings oozes the purest heart extract, a soul tincture of layered character. The opening fireworks of emotion are packed into Temptation’s Wings, which hypnotically addresses you with an outstanding opening riff, after which you start lingering in the spheres of excellence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo2oXg2BsLw
Hypnotized, you take off on the wings of mess, peel away from the world of suffering and soar into Earth’s orbit. “I feel the pressure, it lightens / To judge this spirit of mine / To be like the judgement / To be the king that is left behind” Lifer Phil sings, and after the solo passage in the third quarter of the track, all you can do is drift dreamily into a state of felted bliss. Nothing can hurt you and nothing can destroy the harmonic undulation, and the song follows suit. Pillars Of Eternity offers a kind of voluptuous sketch of full enjoyment in the blue grass of oblivion. “Crumbling world falls through my hands / In my mouth taste bitter sands / Grass is burning, pulse is slow. / Drip by drip my backwards growth… crawl. / Feed my hate. / And I’ll die within my fade / Wine, song, women, birth / This deflowered mother earth / Planting, plowing, how she grieves. / The seeds that grow these dying trees / Feed my hate.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5wDGgiPHEg
Glass cups and vessels fill up with sweet nectar, your lungs swell, and you feel the swirl of intoxication in your mouth. The speakers pour out the biggest, most brilliant tribute to the metal legends Black Sabbath. There’s no soft tissue and no weak spot, even though the oratorio is devoted to glorifying the intoxicating green stuff and being stoned, which carries on with Rehab and the most obvious ode to THC, the track Hail The Leaf. A peak of its own kind is the hookah solo “played” by an old acquaintance, Lil’ Daddy. A whiff of Pantera, meanwhile, can be sensed in the outpouring of slowed-down but honestly delivered anger in Underneath Everything. “Woe to me, battered man / Raise the monolith / Deities my spirit rise / Like days the world forgets – down the / Drain – laid to lame / A fool-ass hearty bliss / Borderline suicide, / Celebrate before my death / Your promised land divide, / That’s why the world lies.” The monolith is built, and in this earthly prison of feelings there’s no room for wavering or regret, though a moment of melancholy is allowed. The band-aid for the wound comes in the form of a sweet, blues-tinged elegy to the eternal South – Eyes Of The South, which builds and swells gradually and with feel. Authentic “redneck rampage” conjures up every argument for why the rebellious South is rugged in character, sturdy, and, hellish trials notwithstanding, doomed to taste the most heartfelt pride. The Led Zep-sounding Jail recalls the Planet Caravan meditation, while its soft images and touches of passing give a sense of timelessness and a safe harbor to all the dreamy rhapsodes of the world, here and now. “One day, the strain / I’ve never felt like this before / Our lives, capsize… I’ve never been… before my god / Why must you kneel for me? / I write for sight / One day you’ll find me in the corner / More sublime, / But I still never died before…” is a complete and condensed meditation that lyrically worms its way slowly into your soul with melancholy and the most honest pain, yet still lets you breathe and float above the physical world as if in a cloud of the purest dreams. Then comes the awakening, the wake-up call! Losing All is one of the most temperamental cuts on the record, with the purest energy of life circling through it. The pulse speeds up only so that the most sensual moment of the record can hit you even harder, encapsulated in the acoustic sin Stone The Crow. The duet of refined guitars plays even with those who aren’t all that into metal, and a feeling of pleasure floods the listener with solidity and swaying melos. Kirk Windstein and Pepper Keenan reveal all their hidden aces and their talent, and the crows, wrapped in the thick smoke of oily lingering, push the final judgment and the apocalypse off to some undefined time in the future. Down have never been closer to the idea of a ballad, and Stone The Crow burns its melody into your brain with bluesy-simple rhythm sections, which is why from now on you’ll associate Down with precisely this tune.
After Swan Song, the passions slowly calm down. The world wraps itself up and buries itself in one last salvo of heavy smoke with Bury In Smoke, which blows out the flames of your sentimentality one final time with somewhat more depressive undertones and veiled aggression, after which only a moment remains to settle down and confirm that you’ve been treated to a true musical epic and, even more importantly, a real (metal) classic.
NOLA has all the aces that make a record a classic by sheer necessity. The juicy guitar sound and the outstanding production from Matt Thomas are an important building block in the mosaic, and there isn’t a speck of too much (or too little) music on the record. The starting point for delving into the wonderful landscape of stoner is there to be tried out and built upon. Many hearts beat as one in a single shared body, and on its debut the band sounds in a way that any further storytelling can only approximate. Plenty of people could have ended their journey with this mature work alone. After long years of hesitation, Down continued the story and brought the southern reaches of the United States closer to the average listener. The seed of success was sown with NOLA, an ode to a city that, in the time after Katrina’s devastating dance, is rebuilding and awakening to new life, and it remains an important building block of the soul and essence of the scene, a milestone in the life of the band. With this record, these musical talents committed themselves even more tightly to making music, and from the bosom of this wonderful haven they’ve since delivered three more releases after that exceptional debut that are simply essential and a must in your music collection – if you give even half a damn about quality music with soul and a solid core!
Lineup
Phil Anselmo – vocals. Guitar on the track Pray for the Locust
Pepper Keenan – guitar
Kirk Windstein – guitar, bass
Jimmy Bower – drums
Guest musicians:
– Todd Strange – whistling and bass on the track Lifer
– Big Ross Karpelman – keyboards on the track Jail
– Lil’ Daddy and Sid Montz – percussion on the track Jail
– Lil’ Daddy – hookah solo on the track Hail the Leaf
Production
Down & Matt Thomas
Track list
1. Temptation Wings
2. Lifer
3. Pillars Of Eternity
4. Rehab
5. Hail The Leaf
6. Underneath Everything
7. Eyes Of The South
8. Jail
9. Losing All
10. Stone The Crow
11. Pray For the Locust
12. Swan Song
13. Bury Me In Smoke
