It’s been years since Down released an album, and they’re not about to start now. However, they will be releasing a series of EPs. On Tuesday, the wait for the first one, the awkwardly-titled Down IV Part 1: The Purple EP, is over. And if you just want to listen to it, the wait’s over now. It’s streaming over at arbiter of all things metal (yeah right) Billboard. The six-song EP is anything anyone could have wanted from the NOLA supergroup: Riffs as sludgy as a Louisiana swamp, Phil Anselmo’s melodic, world-weary vocals, and pretty much all the riffage you might have expected from the band that consists of members of Corrosion of Conformity, Pantera, and Crowbar.
The band spoke to Billboard about releasing a series of four planned EPs. Guitarist Pepper Keenan suggests that the fourth EP is going to be the one to watch. The band compare the first EP to NOLA, while saying that Part 2 will be “more fleshed out like 2007’s Down III, with the third being “trippy, acousticy, mellow, cleaner, not bombastic. The kind of songs we’ve been talking about for years but can never place anywhere.” As for the fourth? “I’m assuming that one is just gonna be doom as fuck – giant, bombastic, slow, “Bury Me in Smoke” typ of things. Apocalyptic. We’ll have fun with it.” Yeah, we will too.
Check out the EP here.
