Gigs

Gig Review: Down

Venue: UEA, Norwich
Date: 10 April 2008

“So, no support acts tonight then?” Confused faces all round. It appears Down want this to be their show and their show alone. Well they are a pretty unique band. As a supergroup consisting of ex-members of Pantera and Superjoint Ritual, and current members of Corrosion Of Conformity, Eyehategod, Crowbar and Kingdom Of Sorrow, the band pretty much make their own rules. Since their inception in 1991 they’ve released just three studio albums and tour only when they’ve got something to promote. So I guess we can count ourselves lucky that they’re here at all.

Hence, instead of a few warm-up slots we get a mouth-watering “introductory video” which turns out to just be a load of 70’s rock bands such as Ted Nugent, Scorpions and Thin Lizzy strutting their stuff, interspersed with various tour shots of the Down guys dicking about. One particular piece of drunken debauchery sees the band lobbing chairs and, in one aborted attempt, a pot plant into a canal. It certainly draws a laugh from the crowd. The only “support band” that gets a cheer is AC/DC but subsequently it’s just a lot of neck pain with no real reward.

Hell, who cares? The screen has vanished in a puff of smoke and there up on stage is half of Pantera! - the maddeningly classy basswork of Rex Rocker (née Brown) and the awesomely deep and fearsomely metallic vocal and super-cool posturing of Phil Anselmo. You just know that a good slice of the audience has turned up just to say they’ve witnessed Phil in full flow.

It’s a slow, uncomfortable start as Phil stands centre-stage nodding his head, encouraging chants of “Down, Down, Down”, pointing at those who are most vociferous and generally letting us know that they are the greatest thing to ever happen to us. Well, some people buy into it, others don’t. Dimebag Darrell inevitably gets a tribute paid to him as the band blaze into ‘Lifer’. It prompts one fan to raise the giant Dimebag poster he’s brought with him and Anselmo wants it. He’s disappointed though as the fan clings it to him and won’t play ball. It’s an interesting interaction and I start to think that the band aren’t going to get quite the reception they were hoping for.

However, just a few tracks down the line and we’re all feeling pretty damn good about their New Orleans rock n’ blues. Maybe it’s Pepper Keenan’s constant smirk, Kirk Windstein’s mesmerizingly, massive beard, Rex’s stoned-out glaze across his eyeballs, but no, it’s almost indisputably that their songs are so damn loveable. There groove is deeper than the Mariana Trench; their big Southern sludge is muckier than Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’. Anselmo’s hard, cutting vocal is, at times, a purely metal roar and I wonder if it flows with or against the warm, bluesy wash of the music. Probably a bit of both, but it certainly makes the whole sound more vitalic, more emotive and ultimately essential.

‘Learn From My Mistake’ sees Kirk and Pepper come together to riff in each others faces. They repeat the trick throughout the night, usually when they feel a trading of solos is in order. Jimmy Bower blasts out beats on skins that sound painfully tight. “Norrr-which, I’ve had plenty of good sources saying you guys are lame” yells Anselmo, “but we’ve exploded that myth tonight”. At least I think that’s what he said. As is the same with most American bands the pronunciation of this particular city is beyond them. He changes tack, standing stock still, quiet as a mouse, whilst the audience goes nuts. “I like looking at you”, he menaces before launching into ‘On March The Saints’.

As we near the end of the night the big guns start appearing in their set. ‘Ghosts along the Mississippi’ bristles with dark magic whilst ‘The Eye Of The South’ packs in a bit of everything – deep bluesy chugging, fizzing chord couplets, and chiming solo action. They depart the stage to a thunderous show of appreciation. And for one last trick they throw into the encore the awesome ‘Stone The Crow’ before handing off their instruments to the roadcrew who keep it all going while they take their bows. Pretty impressive stuff then, yet just a part of me wished they could have left their egos at home and bought a decent support band along instead.

For fans of: Pantera, Crowbar, Corrosion Of Conformity
Band links = Down

Tags: live, gig, down, nola, review, norwich, uea, University of East Anglia

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