Heavy Song of the Week: Down Return with Masterpiece “Blood Oath”

Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, we highlight the new single “Blood Oath” from Down. Down are in rare company. It is not easy to be a band that releases on average one record every seven and a half years. The acts that can do so and still make a major splash are very few and far between; if I say Tool, how long will it be before you can name a second one? The fact that Down return over a decade after their last released music, having weathered some self-inflicted controversies and subsequent fence-mending, the wavering condition of each of their main bands, and still delivered a song every bit as good as “Lifer,” their debut single over 30 years ago, is quite astonishing. “Blood Oath” slips through the fingers on attempts to describe it. It’s Sabbathian, yes, but it manages to fuse elements of Ozzy, Dio, and even Tony Martin era work, both vocally and musically. It lives in the dire and doomy sludge terrain of New Orleans, the home of many of these players, singer Philip Anselmo included, but it also gestures to the great English bands of the style and even litt...