DOWN Bassist REX BROWN To Sit Out North American Tour

DOWN/ex-PANTERA bassist Rex Brown has released the following statement:

"It is with my deepest apologies to let you know that I will not be joining [DOWN] on the first leg of the forthcoming U.S./Canada tour. It has been mutually agreed upon between myself and the guys that I take this time to address some personal issues. Make no mistake, I will be joining my brothers on the second leg of the tour and in the studio in the very near future. This is of utmost importance at this time. Thank you all for your support and understanding. I will see y'all really soon!"

Holland's FaceCulture recently conducted an interview with Brown. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On PANTERA's influence on younger bands:

"We were the kings of metal forever. A lot of bands were influenced by PANTERA back in the day. I'm not patting myself on the back or anything, I'm just saying, we were really good at what we did. We were the kings. No questions asked."

On the end of PANTERA:

"Philip [Anselmo, DOWN/ex-PANTERA vocalist] and I wanted to do this DOWN thing. We had written all these tracks [for what turned out to be DOWN's second album] and wanted to do this. And the brothers [late PANTERA guitarist 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott and his brother, ex-PANTERA drummer Vinnie Paul] got really mad about it. 'Cause we took a year off. We needed three years off, you know what I'm saying?! But they drew an imaginary line in the sand. And I was like, 'I'm staying out of this.' Phil wanted to do SUPERJOINT RITUAL and the whole thing, and before you knew it, it was like Sammy Hagar and VAN HALEN and whatever. I didn't say a word to the press — nobody. I just sat there and hoped to my lucky stars that everybody would clean their act up and get back together. And it didn't happen. Some crazy lunatic fucking shot Dime in the head four times. He was the best man at my wedding. It's tragic, man. [It was a] lot to go through."

On whether PANTERA would have gotten back together had Dimebag not been murdered:

"Guaranteed. I would have made it happen."

On DOWN's forthcoming album:

"We have a bunch of stuff left over from the last record. What we wanna do is just go back to a bare-bones approach — get back to good old riffs, and that's the way we're gonna approach this record.

"I think right now heavy riffs are fuckin' in. And it's not that we're following any trend or anything. We went as far as we possibly could with the last record — I mean, that thing was a monster — but we don't wanna go through that period again of taking a year to put it together. For what it was, it was a great record — [it] still is, and always will be. We went really raw on the second one, and then the third one, we really wanted to delve into all kinds of different stuff."

"I'll just put it this way: Phil and I have a bunch of ideas that are recorded on tape. And he has three with the band that I played on or Kirk [Windstein, DOWN guitarist] might have played on. So there's like three heavy ones and like... I write a bunch of stuf on acoustic, but that's not gonna happen on this record. We can do that at a different time, and it'll still stand the test of time, I promise you that."

"We can go knock out a record in 15 days or 30 days, or we can... We've just gotta make it right. That's all I can say. I'm not gonna give you a date, I'm not gonna give you a time period or anything. When it comes out, it'll be bad-ass."

Watch the first part (out of six) of FaceCulture's chat with Rex Brown below.

DOWN will tour select U.S. markets with the MELVINS in August/September. The group will then return to the studio from October through December to record what will eventually become the fourth DOWN album, tentatively due in early 2010.

In October 2008, DOWNreleased a "deluxe edition" of its critically acclaimed third album, "Over the Under". The deluxe package, which was made available as a Best Buy exclusive, includes a DVD with over 30 minutes of previously unreleased live performances and behind-the-scenes footage. The album was released on Down Records in conjunction with Warner Music Group's Independent Label Group (ILG).