NEW DOWN, NO REX BROWN, KILL DEVIL HILL STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

2007’s Down III: Over the Under was pretty sweet, right? I can’t speak for the masses, but I thought the album found Down sounding as good and as energized as ever after a five-year hiatus following the release of Down II. Five years will be the magic number once again, as according to guitarist Kirk Windstein via Twitter the band is recording a new album (Down IV?) this month:

Kirk followed that up with another tweet three days later saying that recording had already commenced, so it seems like things are moving pretty quickly. New Down record in Spring 2012?

Bassist Rex Brown, however, will not be participating. Following months of speculation and a statement by drummer Jimmy Bower, Rex finally broke his own silence on the situation. From an interview with Metal Maiden:

I was playing with Down a whole bit and I just kind of got tired of the… You know, Philip and I had been together 23 years. And when I first met these guys [Kill Devil Hill] in January of this year, when I walked in and we played in the rehearsal room, it just clicked. The chemistry and everything that went along with it… I mean, it’s so easy to say that, but really… I just said, ‘To hell with it. This is what I wanna do.’ . . . I didn’t make an announcement at all [that I was leaving Down]; I just quit.

Rex is staying busy, though. While he’s no longer in Arms of the Sun, his new focus is Kill Devil Hill, a project featuring drummer Vinny Appice (Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, Dio), guitarist Mark Savon and vocalist Dew Bragg. From what I’ve heard (below), the band sounds basically like what you’d expect a band with Brown and Appice to sound like, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. Their debut album is tentatively scheduled for a March 2012 release, and they’re actually on tour now (dates here). Here’s some live footage from Reading, PA last week:

-VN