DOWN Bassist Says He Was 'Going Through Hell' Following DIMEBAG's Death, Hurricane Katrina

November 7, 2007

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times recently conducted an interview with DOWN/ex-PANTERA bassist Rex Brown.

"I was going through hell," Brown said of the period from late 2004 until initial rehearsals for the new album commenced in 2006. "Everybody in the band was. The tragedy of Dime [Dimebag Darrell Abbott, the former PANTERA guitarist, was murdered onstage in December 2004 during a performance by Abbott's post-PANTERA band, DAMAGEPLAN] and [Hurricane] Katrina, not being able to get in touch with people and not knowing where your loved ones were, trying to get a cell phone connection or some kind of network where you could find out about people... It's been two years, and they still haven't rebuilt the city."

Like the Abbott brothers, who formed PANTERA's nucleus, Brown hails from the Dallas area, but he also has roots in New Orleans and empathizes with what his DOWN bandmates and friends from the region went through.

"It's hard," he said, "when you have friends and you're driving through the neighborhood, and it's like 'Well, what's her name didn't make it' or 'They didn't get out' or 'Remember them in grade school? Yup, they're gone.' It's a pretty tough fuckin' time. It's not anything to just blow over."

In an online diary of the making of the album, DOWN/ex-PANTERA singer Philip Anselmo describes this period as "two of the worst years — for myself and everyone I know."

But DOWN didn't take the approach you might typically expect from a metal band — channeling all its energy into the same-old, same-old rage. To respond angrily would have been counterproductive and pointless, Brown said. "There are bigger problems that you face as you get older," he said.

"What Phil did," Brown added, "is he took the positive in everything that he could take out of this, because that's the only way you can get through shit like that. Fuck the anger. We can't sit there and go boo-hoo, wah-wah."

Read the entire article at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

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