Customer Reviews:
 Buy this if you want some REAL music. May 29, 2008
~Rob (Mansfield Ohio, the greatest city in the world...NOT!)
One of the best albums I own. Maybe THE BEST! An essential lesson in Doom/Stoner metal. Sounds like it was influenced by Ozzy-era Black Sabbath and Trouble. The sum of the parts (Pepper Keenan, Phil Anselmo) is greater than their previous bands (C.O.C, Pantera). Super Heavy, but bluesy and melodic. Even the lighter songs (Stone the Crow) are heavy, and the other trippy stuff (Jail) is great too. Will not dissapoint.
 Not bad, just not what I expected. May 21, 2008
B. Nallick (Mpls, MN)
It's Phil so it can't be that bad.
It's not. But the slow southen thing just is what I like.
I haven't heard any Down since the dubut. Just not interested.
This group is for people who like their metal pure.
And more in the old vein of Sabbath.
Glad to see Phil didn't hang up the towel after what happened with Dime.
R.I.P. Dime.
Phil, keep doing what you wanna!
Best of the best February 21, 2008
Corey E. Sims
Pure unadultarated METAL at its purest ! This is the best metal album of the 90's hands DOWN! If you call yourself a fan of Black Sabbath or any music that is real then you must own this. Nothing has came out since this album(including the other two Down album's) that is this powerful! It's raw and real and probably drug induced recording will make you feel like there is hope for metal music in general. Buy this album listen to it often and feel privledged that the guy's that made this recording did it for the love of metal.If Black Sabbath(OZZY era) and old ZZtop meet's a little pot induced 90's metal wisdom from the best maker's of that kind of music this is your bag of trick's!
All True Rock is Southern, Y'all December 26, 2007
DoctorBass (The South)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
NOLA ranks as one of my fav CDs. I had grown a bit weary of the "look how rapidly I can play" metal in exclusive vogue back then, and look who came out with an album that would make early Sabbath (Geezer to this day) super-proud? Jimi would dig it too, yes. This album showcases the guys' influences and they are clearly happy to do so. So you hear Hendrix-influenced riffs, even brief leads (respectfully brief: No one will ever dare mimic the Master; it's an exercise in futility); the overwhelming presence of early Black Sabbath bone-crushing, freight-train chugging heavy rock riffing is just inescapable unless you are profoundly deaf, and even then you would feel the vibrations... As for the Southern influence, IDK. Lynyrd Skynyrd?! Here?! People keep talking about how NOLA evokes the South, and conjures up images of guys jammin' in some shed, all muddied, with scorching and humid air mixing with the herb inhaled. C'mon: That's a bunch of patronizing nonsense! I hail from the South, and to me this is a classic heavy rock album, period. Great rock is saturated with Southern influences by default. See, all REAL rock owes Southern music a major debt, because it evolved from the Delta Blues--the Mississippi Delta of course. It evolved from the shamelesslessly plagiarized music of Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Mississippi Fred McDonald, and the list goes on and on and on. IMHO, NOLA isn't much more "Southern" than Sabbath's debut, for instance. Both grind you to a pulp with the bluesiest heavy rock you can imagine and you know you want it. The vocals are spooky and festooned with Spanish moss and kudzu even in Sabbath's northerly latitude rock where the moss and vines are of quite different varieties. But this isn't Botany 101. It's about the music, y'all; it's about its roots! In hindsight, how funny is it that "music critics" lambasted Sabbath for aping Zep? Could you imagine (the idiots would've done the same to Down if they were Zep contemporaries)? On the one hand you had a 100% blues-infused brilliantly sludgy heavy and heady overdriven spooky (like Robert Johnson was spooky with Hellhounds on My Trail) rock band that hailed the leaf like its progeny Down, and on the other hand you had a proto-metal band that was very cocky, rude and naughty and plagiarized Muddy Waters and Little Milton et al. (sorry folks; y'all know it's true: I'm so glad that Muddy won the law-suit for the ripped off Whole Lotta Love) and experimented with Celtic and acoustic genres (great band, Zep, but so different). In short, if it's real rock, it's Southern. I always find it pathetic (disturbing, too) when some uber-losers brand themselves as a "white power" rock band. Black Metal had (still has, c.f. NSBM) a few of those ignorant beasties as did punk. The joke is on them: The scales that they are playing (poorly in most cases) were developed by black men (and women, I imagine). So perhaps they should return to their truly (or alleged) Nordic roots, and play accordion muzik and such? As always, this is all about opinion. Your opinion might differ, but it's no more accurate than mine. Of course, if it's fueled by stupidity, cluelessness or hate, mine is SUPERIOR to yours. You need to go meet your Maker and pay your dues to the Grim Reaper, and do it sooner rather than later. If you respect others and practice the golden rule, then...cool. So just have a good time ... all of the time. That's my philosophy. Sweet Leaf.
What can I say? It`s prefect.... September 23, 2007
Orjan Olsen (Trondheim, Norway)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a perfect album, all of the songs are really, really good! Phil is at the top of his game, so is pepper, kirk and jim, it all sums up to one of the best metalalbums ever recorded!!!
Check out Down II and Down III
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