DOWN: NOLA

Produced by Down and Matt Thomas

Released: 1995

It's pretty rare when both critics and fans agree about the greatness of an album, but an album like NOLA is a very rare thing indeed. Supergroups are usually pretty hit-and-miss affairs, with most of them not being particularly "super" at all. But Down is one of those that really worked, fusing its various talents to create one of the best metal albums of all.

Written almost entirely by Pantera's Phil Anselmo and Pepper Keenan from Corrosion of Conformity and fleshed out with the assistance of Crowbar's Kirk Windstein and Eyehategod drummer Jimmy Bower, NOLA is a glorious sludge-fest, a relentlessly murky album that simply defines its genre. Anselmo puts in a slow-burning vocal performance that is in parts mournful, desperate and angry and really quite different from his Pantera style. Keenan's riffs are catchy and immense and Bower's drum sound borrows from the enormous, up-front style of John Bonham: powerful, echoing thunder. The raw production only enhances the atmosphere of this release. NOLA sounds like it was recorded in a rehearsal studio during a jam session in which ridiculously copious amounts of controlled substances were being imbibed.

From the opening chords of "Temptation's Wings" you know that this is going to be a dark, pained but strangely enjoyable journey through tales of prison, hard living and celebrations of drug use drawn into stark reality by Anselmo's cryptic, seemingly train-of-thought lyrics that rank as some of the best he ever penned. The sensational, layered "Stone the Crows" is the album's stand-out and rightly its best-known cut, but immediately after it is "Pray for the Locust", an acoustic interlude that recalls Tony Iommi's on Master of Reality, the album NOLA most closely resembles. Then comes the monumental closer, "Bury Me in Smoke", a cataclysmic stoner epic that perhaps only Sleep could match.

NOLA is a true masterpiece, easily as good or better than anything Down's individual members created with any of their other bands. One of the best heavy rock albums ever.

1. Temptation's 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 Crows
11. Pray for the Locust
12. Swan Song
13. Bury Me in Smoke

Rating: 100%