Down Live At The Masquerade – Atlanta
September 26, 2011
After an already rowdy crowd wavered between chanting “We want Phil” and “Down” repetitively, the band took the stage. Phil walked to the edge of the stage like the life of the party. He held two bottles of Beck beer in one hand, and grabbed the mic with the other. He announced, “Hey Atlanta. I want you to know that I know you are one of the hardest crowds and I’m acknowledging you.” The energy from the rapt crowd only grew as men and women in shirts representing bands from the Misfits to Black Label Society reached out for a chance to shake Phil Anselmo’s hand. Anselmo seemed genuinely happy in his Ghost t-shirt, and the energy from the guitarists Kirk Windstein and Pepper Keenan, with his “Riff Lord” tattooed Gibson, testified to the love Down has as a band for what it takes to keep going.
For the most part, a typical metal audience swarmed about the Masquerade. Men and women in black, band t-shirts wearing jeans with chain wallets, and carrying beer. Some of the audience member’s eyes seemed shrouded with a darkness that comes from drug abuse, but many just looked eager to see one of their favorite bands.
With sweaty people floating toward the stage from the back of the room, the parents of two children decided something needed to change from the place they secured front row, center. I really do think parents should think a bit more about the kind of show to bring a ten-year-old to, but the Masquerade security guys did a wonderful job sheltering the boy and girl on the side of the stage.
Down works its fans into a proper frenzy and from the opening “Hail the Leaf” to the show’s ending with “Stone the Crows” and “Bury Me in Smoke” those at Atlanta’s Masquerade shared the night moshing in the pit as the boys on stage moshed and head banged with each other.
Setlist from 9-23-11:
Hail the Leaf
The Path
Lifer
Lysergic Funeral Procession
Pillars of Eternity
New Orleans is a Dying Whore
Losing All
Ghosts Along the Mississippi
Underneath Everything
Temptation’s Wings
There’s Something on My Side
Eyes of the South
Stone the Crows
Bury Me in Smoke
Review by Ellen Eldridge
