Down II: A Bustle in Your Hedgerow

Seven years had passed since NOLA. The band had stopped in 1996 so that everybody could go back to Eyehategod, Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar and Pantera, and when they started again in 1999 the bass had changed hands from Todd Strange to Pantera's Rex Brown. In November 2001 they moved into Anselmo's barn, wanting the record to feel bluesy. In that room -- Nodferatu's Lair -- the writing and the recording took twenty-eight days. Warren Riker produced it with the band. Anselmo also plays guitar on "Landing on the Mountains of Meggido", which has Stephanie Opal Weinstein singing behind him, and the ninth track, "Doobinterlude", is an instrumental on which Jimmy Bower plays everything himself. The subtitle, "A Bustle in Your Hedgerow...", is a line from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"; the album was going to be called The Backwood Heavies. The reception split along a line. Borivoj Krgin of Blabbermouth.net wrote that it sounded thrown together and that much of the material fell short of the debut. British writers were warmer: Metal Hammer gave it eight out of ten and Rock Sound four out of five. It entered the Billboard 200 at number 44, placed fourth in Metal Hammer's albums of 2002, fourteenth in Kerrang!'s and twentieth in Terrorizer's, and in 2005 Rock Hard put it at number 319 in its 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. The Japanese edition came out on 10 April 2002 as AMCY-10007, at 2,640 yen including tax. The running order here is the original release's as printed.