Nineteen Years Later, a Real Down Record
Down is back. Not “back” as in another festival slot or another remaster. Back as in there is a new Down album coming, and I have been watching them tease it for years.
Volume V arrives November 20 via Nuclear Blast, and it is the band’s first full-length since Down III: Over The Under in 2007. Ten tracks, written at Anselmo’s home studio Nodferatu’s Lair, produced by Eddie Mapp and the band, mixed by Dave Fortman. King Diamond guests on “Merciful Fate.” Lead single “Blood Oath” is out now.
That 2007 date is the whole story. Down IV got split into two EPs, Part One in 2012 and Part Two in 2014, and I thought the split album was a bit of a dud. So this is not a nineteen-year gap between one good record and the next. It is nineteen years of a band that could have made an album and mostly didn’t.
Anselmo says there was “a sense of lightness in the air” during the sessions, and it comes through on the first single. Windstein says it feels like NOLA with another 35 years of songwriting behind it. That is the pitch, and I want to believe it.
Keenan and Windstein tracked their guitars together, at the same time, the way people used to. Keenan’s framing of the band is still the best one: five guys who all sounded different but came up inside “the same 20-block radius.”
Here is the part I’m less comfortable with. Five guys this deep into their careers are free to do whatever they please, and that freedom is exactly how Down IV happened. Nobody was going to tell them no then. Nobody is going to tell them no now. The difference is that this time they finished a whole album instead of shipping it in halves.
I’m optimistic anyway. Watch the video, get a preorder in, and catch them on tour if you can, though “if you can” is doing heavy lifting out here. The Strap It Down run is all east of the Rockies, Aftershock is Sacramento, and Sick New World is in Fort Worth. SoCal gets nothing.
Volume V is out November 20 via Nuclear Blast. Preorder it here. CD, digital, and 2xLP across seven color variants, including a Decibel exclusive and a Revolver exclusive.
Source: DOWN