NOLA

Most of the songs were written by Phil Anselmo and Pepper Keenan between 1990 and 1995. Anselmo wrote three of them alone: "Hail the Leaf", "Pray for the Locust" and "Pillars of Eternity". How the record reached anyone is a story of its own. In 1991 the band made a three-song demo for underground trading — "Losing All", "Temptation's Wings" and "Bury Me in Smoke". They would ask metal fans whether they had heard of a band called Down and hand over a copy without mentioning that they were in it. A second demo in 1992 added an intro to the same running order, and a ten-song tape in 1993 carried nearly everything that became the album. It has been described as taking the legacy of Black Sabbath head-on and soaking it in the swamps of New Orleans. David Reamer of AllMusic singled out "Temptation's Wings", "Stone the Crow" and "Bury Me in Smoke" and called the album a landmark that belongs in any collection of heavy metal. Rock Hard placed it at number 244 in its 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. The running order here is the original's as printed.