All the while, as the riffs descend like colossi and Jimmy Bower drives the engine-room effortlessly, Anselmo conducts and cajoles the crowd like the great frontman he truly is. Down was absolutely on fire as they ripped through ‘Lifer’, which the singer dedicated to fallen friends like Joey LaCaze, Layne Staley and, naturally, Dimebag, and then into ‘Hail the Leaf’, followed by the 70s acid rock flashback ‘Ghosts Along the Mississippi’. Pepper Keenan in particular seemed barely able to wipe the smile from his face – and who could blame him. Like him, the rest of Down are having a blast from the moment they hit the stage with ‘Lysergik Funeral Procession’.
He even cracks a grin a couple of times at the end as another young band gets up and starts jamming on ‘Bury Me in Smoke’ while Down hosts their own party on stage. Almost thirteen years later and Anselmo is before me again, lucid, gregarious and – despite punching himself in the head several times throughout the set – amiable. There was nothing funny about him that night – he was simply a belligerent arsehole, a man close to his nadir who just seemed to no longer care.
The last time I saw Phil Anselmo on stage he was making a disgrace of himself, rambling like a drunken fool, abusing the crowd and sitting down on the stage steadfastly refusing to sing ‘Cemetery Gates’ with Pantera. I really hope I get to see this band again. Their last song rolls out in a long, slow groove, frontman Jeff Angell mingles with the crowd, posing for photos and singing with a voice like a smooth malt whiskey. Opening tonight on this bill-to-kill-for was Seattle combo Walking Papers featuring the rhythm section of Duff McKagan and Barrett Martin, and mis-reading the start time I walked in at the tail-end of their set, immediately kicking myself to discover them playing some of the meanest heavy blues I’ve heard in a good donkey’s age. Caligula’s Horse The Metro Social, Sydney NSW.Chelsea Wolfe & Emma Ruth Rundle Manning Bar, Sydney Uni.Blacken Open Air 2022 Ross River Resort/Arrernte Country, NT.Nicolas Cage Fighter: The Bones That Grew From Pain.Shannon and the Clams: Along Comes a Spider.Mountain Wizard Death Cult: Enlightened by Darkness.Nicolas Cage Fighter: The Art of Suffering.
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