Down, the ‘supergroup’ made up of singer Philip H. Anselmo (Pantera), guitarists Pepper Keenan (Corrosion Of Conformity) and Kirk Windstein (Crowbar), drummer Jimmy Bower (Eyehategod) and bassist Pat Bruders (Crowbar) has started work on new music! You haven’t heard a new album since 2014’s “Down IV – Part Two” EP!

Yesterday (December 28), Windstein shared a photo of him and Keenan in the band’s rehearsal studio in Louisiana, with the message, “So…we kinda wrote 2 DOWN songs today!!!”

This past October, Windstein talked to Loaded Radio about possibly writing and recording more Down music, “I talked to Phil a pretty good bit… Phil’s attitude is kind of just like, ‘Look, fellas, I’m doing what I’m doing [with Pantera]. I love it. We’re killing it.’ And boy, are they. We [Crowbar] had the pleasure of playing with Pantera in Poland in early June. It was unbelievable. I mean, I laughed, I cried. My emotion was something else, because I was very tight with [late Pantera guitarist] Dimebag. It’s real — what they’re doing is real. But what Phil said, ‘Hey, man, in the big picture of things, dude, I really don’t have a band. I’m doing a Pantera reunion thing.’ And of course they’re gonna do it as long as they can. I mean, I don’t blame them. Who would? You do what you’ve gotta do. And they’re killing it and doing it heartfelt for the right reasons, and I love it. But like he said, ‘Look, you are the guys.’ And I talked to Pepper about two or three days ago. I think he’s got a few shows in early November with C.O.C. and he’s off for a while. Crowbar’s next gig is in Ireland in late February, so we’re off for a good bit. And when you have five guys — well, Phil, of course, will be kind of out of the picture for now but me, Pepper, Jimmy and Pat — in a room together, when you’ve got all these guys writing riffs off of each other… And that’s the way I like to write — I like to write spontaneously off the cuff. I don’t like to [go], ‘Okay, this is my new song. Boom. Here y’all go,’ or whatever. I like to write off the cuff, on the spot. I feel what the other guys are giving me vibe-wise and whatnot. And that, to me, is a winning formula. It really is.”

Windstein added, “When we got DOWN together in 1991, that was the first demo tape. We wrote ‘Bury Me In Smoke’, ‘Temptation’s Wings’ and ‘Losing All’ in a day. We recorded it. Phil sang. We mixed it off on a four-track or some shit, and that was it. Phil flew back to Texas and Pepper flew back to North Carolina with C.O.C. So when we got together, we always joked, but it’s no longer a joke that this is the kind of band we can grow old with. It doesn’t matter what we look like. We can be fat. We can be bald. We’re not attracting 18-year-old girls. If they wanna be a fan of the music, great. If you’re a [Taylor Swift] fan, hey, more power to you. It’s all good. Whatever. But that was not our intention. And it’s kind of ironic or whatever that it’s kind of come full circle where we see ourselves going, ‘Hey, guys, we’re closing in on mid-50s to 60s. This is a band that we can actually do and kill it and then retire with it maybe.’ So that’s what I personally believe is going to happen, and I hope that in the near future, that’s what happens and we’re able to do more Down in, say, ’24, ’25, whatever. But there’s no time limit on anything. I mean, Phil’s doing what he’s doing and God bless him for that. And I’m so proud of him. I really am.”

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