GAZETA DO POVO NEWSPAPER - Juliana Girardi



After playing in Argentina, Chile and other cities of Brazil, Paulinia (at the SWU festival) and Porto Alegre, Down ended its first South American tour with a memorable concert in Curitiba. Despite the small audience for its history and importance – less than one thousand people attended the Curitiba Master Hall –, the supergroup from New Orleans succeeded in setting fire on the place and performed one of the most intense and loud concerts of the year.



Led by the insane Phil Anselmo (ex-Pantera), the band (which also features members of Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar and Eyehategod) opened the night with the marijuana anthem "Hail the Leaf" of their first and great album "NOLA" (1995) – which set the tone for the show and was even played in full a few days before at the SWU festival. With a set list of about 15 songs, the group revisited tracks throughout its career and still presented, for the general joy, an excerpt from the classic "Walk" by Pantera.



In addition to the extremely high and heavy concert – that overcame Slayer and Motörhead who played recently in the same Curitiba Master Hall – it´s necessary to highlight the good humor of the band, that made jokes and played the whole time with each other and the audience. During the famous "Stone the Crow", they even called to the stage a fan that looked a lot like the guitarist Kirk Windstein (Crowbar) – the guy ended up singing a snippet of the chorus with Anselmo.



Although still very intense on stage (he even opened his forehead with a mic on SWU), Phil Anselmo appeared more relaxed than usual at these shows in South America and even said during the presentation that the concert in Curitiba was the best on the Brazilian tour, leading the audience to even higher levels of delirium. To reward all this effort of the audience, who even saw one fan broke his knee in a circle pit, the band played the sensational "There's Something on My Side", present on their second album, and that was not being included on the tour.



As usually, the closure was made with the ultra-heavy "Bury Me in Smoke", with Down members giving place to their roadies and the members of Loaded (which opened the night with a boring concert), on the last and mesmerizing riff of the night.



Now we can only hope for Down to come back to Brazil soon with their new EP on luggage and bring together their other bands, such as Crowbar and Eyehategod – currently, Pepper Keenan is no longer playing with the COC. And the next time the fans should do as Phil Anselmo asked and fullfill the concert.