NOLA
A side project that outlived its parent bands: how five musicians from New Orleans invented Southern sludge in 1995 out of whiskey, Sabbath riffs and swamp air — without meaning to.
Down were never meant to be a band. Five musicians from New Orleans, each with a day job that paid the bills — Pantera, Corrosion Of Conformity, Crowbar, Eyehategod — got together to do what their other bands wouldn't let them: play slow. Smoke-cured riffs, Sabbath dunked in swamp water, no career plan. Which is exactly why "NOLA" still works.
You hear it in the attitude. Where Pantera in 1995 traded in precision and fury, "Temptation's Wings" lumbers into view with an ease that knows no hurry. Phil Anselmo sings here — he doesn't bark, he sings, raw and damaged, and it remains one of his finest performances. "Lifer" has a chorus you're still bellowing two decades on. "Stone The Crow" is the ballad that refuses to be one, and "Bury Me In Smoke" closes the album with six minutes that sound like a band slowly bleeding an amplifier dry in a rehearsal room.
The great strength is the groove. Jimmy Bower doesn't play beats, he drops them. Pepper Keenan and Kirk Windstein stack guitars like bricks laid crooked that somehow hold. What comes out is a sound later called Southern sludge — heavy, oily, warm.
Flawless it is not. Thirteen songs and over an hour is too much; in the final third a few numbers drift past without leaving marks. And the production is raw to the edge of sloppiness — which fans celebrate as honesty and sceptics read as laziness. Both are true.
None of which changes the fact that "NOLA" is a foundation. Every band today crossing sludge with Southern groove stands on these riffs. That Down are finally working on a follow-up in 2026 only makes revisiting it more urgent.
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Strengths
- +Phil Anselmo's finest vocal performance — raw, damaged, actually sung
- +Jimmy Bower's groove: not beats but dropped weight
- +"Stone The Crow" and "Lifer" — anthems without an ounce of calculation
- +Single-handedly defines an entire sub-genre
Weaknesses
- −Over an hour long — songs drift by in the final third
- −The raw production is a matter of taste: honesty or laziness
- −Anyone here for Anselmo's Pantera aggression is in the wrong place
Verdict
An album that never wanted to be perfect and became one that lasts precisely for that reason. "NOLA" is smoky, too long, untidy — and still the cornerstone of a whole school. If you want to know what the South sounds like in metal, start here.