DOWN: Audio Interview With KIRK WINDSTEIN Available

Wrexham, Wales-based "Metalheadz" show conducted an interview with guitarist Kirk Windstein of DOWN at this year's Download festival, which was held June 12-14 at Donington Park, United Kingdom. You can now listen to the chat using the player below.

In a recent interview with Holland's FaceCulture, DOWN/ex-PANTERA bassist Rex Brown stated about DOWN's plans for a new studio album, "We have a bunch of stuff left over from the last record. What we wanna do is just go back to a bare-bones approach — get back to good old riffs, and that's the way we're gonna approach this record.

He added, "I think right now heavy riffs are fuckin' in. And it's not that we're following any trend or anything. We went as far as we possibly could with the last record — I mean, that thing was a monster — but we don't wanna go through that period again of taking a year to put it together. For what it was, it was a great record — [it] still is, and always will be. We went really raw on the second one, and then the third one, we really wanted to delve into all kinds of different stuff."

"I'll just put it this way: Phil [Anselmo, vocals] and I have a bunch of ideas that are recorded on tape. And he has three with the band that I played on or Kirk [Windstein, DOWN guitarist] might have played on. So there's like three heavy ones and like... I write a bunch of stuf on acoustic, but that's not gonna happen on this record. We can do that at a different time, and it'll still stand the test of time, I promise you that."

"We can go knock out a record in 15 days or 30 days, or we can... We've just gotta make it right. That's all I can say. I'm not gonna give you a date, I'm not gonna give you a time period or anything. When it comes out, it'll be bad-ass."

DOWN will tour select U.S. markets with the MELVINS in August/September. The group will then return to the studio from October through December to record what will eventually become the fourth DOWN album, tentatively due in early 2010.

DOWN's forthcoming CD will tentatively be produced by Dave Fortman, a former member of UGLY KID JOE who has also worked with such artists as MUDVAYNE and EVANESCENCE.

Anselmo recently spent time at home in New Orleans recovering from surgery. He said in an April online posting, "this time it was a semi-torn ACL [anterior cruciate ligament, one of four ligaments that are critical to the stability of the knee joint] and a semi-torn meniscus [a common knee injury that can cause pain in the joint]."