Bury Me In Smoke

September 22, 2015 8:19 PM

"By all accounts, work on NOLA began at some point in 1991. The demo work hammered out during those sessions was captured on tape, and as the story goes, was then distributed to unsuspecting headbangers far and wide accompanied with only a word-of-mouth seal of approval."

In which Invisible Oranges discusses Down's superb debut album, a slab of southern doom titled NOLA.

"The fact that it took nearly four years for Down to release NOLA isn’t all that surprising, as bands with no label support often have to work for years before capturing anyone’s attention. What is kind of staggering is the collective output of the members of Down during those four years. In that time, Pantera released both Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven while C.O.C. dropped Blind and Deliverance. Eyehategod put out two long-players, In Name of Suffering and Take as Needed for Pain, and Crowbar authored Obedience Through Suffering, a self-titled joint produced by Anselmo, and Time Heals Nothing. These days, when people talk about top-shelf music from the South, these are the albums that they reference. Well, the ones listed above and NOLA."

Temptation's Wings
Stone the Crow
Losing All
Bury Me In Smoke

posted by Existential Dread (11 comments total)

Has anybody ever connected the dots between Down and the sludge movement coming out of Georgia?
posted by The Giant Squid at 8:52 PM on September 22, 2015

Thanks for this. I haven't listened to NOLA for five years or so, about time to give it another spin.
posted by jklaiho at 1:01 AM on September 23, 2015

Southern hardcore worries me the same way Nordic hardcore does. It seems to worship and the same altar of oblivion and class apartheid.

Which is, you know, not much different than the metal/hardcore of yore. I'm just painfully aware of how little I understood about this back in the day.

This band seems to have keyed into their fans in a big way, and the music suits the sort of liminal festival setting.

Metal heads gotta have their churches, too!
posted by clvrmnky at 6:59 AM on September 23, 2015

Thanks for the post. I forgot how hilariously metal the fade-out followed by the main riff fading back in at the end of Bury Me in Smoke is.

Fans of this should check out Slow Southern Steel (whole documentary on Youtube).
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:31 AM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

This record does paint a picture of life near the poverty line in the South, although I don't know if it glorifies it per se. Nordic black metal was pretty nihilist, but it was mostly a posture to shock, I think. Nordic hardcore (Refused? Raised Fist) has always had some pretty class conscious bands as well as more fuck-the-system types.

I was blown away by the list of records these guys released while working on this album; Pantera's two biggest records, C.O.C.'s mainstream breakthrough, and those vicious Eyehategod albums. And this one is the best of them all, IMO.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:34 AM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's my opinion that this album is what it is because of Kirk Windstein. I mean just listen to the recent Crowbar album. NOLA was the only one where he played both guitar and bass, and well... Bury me in Smoke is pretty much a Kirk Windstein jam, as far as I can tell. Later albums where he's just playing guitar are fine, but none of them are close to as viscerally butt-shaking as NOLA.
posted by vanar sena at 11:43 AM on September 23, 2015

Todd Strange is credited as playing bass on the album.
posted by Dark Messiah at 12:03 PM on September 23, 2015

That said, Kirk is definitely a driving force behind the material -- no question. "Stone the Crow" gets played at least 2-3 times per month in my house, every month.
posted by Dark Messiah at 12:09 PM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've read several sources saying that all the recorded bass for the album was Windstein. Even the Metal Archive listing for the album says so, as does Strange's wikipedia page (and I promise it wasn't me who put it there).
posted by vanar sena at 12:17 PM on September 23, 2015

Fuck, I love this album so much.

And Slow Southern Steel deserves it's own FPP, but I'm not the 🐵 To do it.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 12:38 PM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's my opinion that this album is what it is because of Kirk Windstein. I mean just listen to the recent Crowbar album . NOLA was the only one where he played both guitar and bass, and well... Bury me in Smoke is pretty much a Kirk Windstein jam, as far as I can tell. Later albums where he's just playing guitar are fine, but none of them are close to as viscerally butt-shaking as NOLA.

I love Crowbar but officially the writing credits for NOLA are mostly Phil and Pepper Keenan. Kirk gets a couple but I don't think any of the big hits. You know how these things go though.

Anyway it's a great album - my favorite Phil Anselmo recording by some margin.
posted by atoxyl at 1:24 PM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]