Former Pantera/Down bassist Rex Brown has confirmed his exit from Kill Devil Hill. Revealing the news to Loudwire, Brown, who more recently has been pursuing a solo project, stated of his departure:
“About 2014 in the summertime, I had just about had it. I spent 30 years on the road and you have to remember that after Pantera when Dime got murdered, I went straight into a thing with Philip and in 2005 did Down and did another five or six years, did a bunch of recordings down at Willie Nelson’s place. It’s just been one project to the next, and I really haven’t had the time. I had all these songs that I wanted to get out.
- Advertisement -So I think our last gig was September 2015, and I put the solo record out and it did what it did and I’ve spent the better part of 2018 … man, I’ve got 18 tracks in the can, and I’m gonna finish up all this stuff in March. So really, I’ve just been going from one thing to the other to the other since I’ve been 17 with some breaks in between, but man I had to get off that road.
With Kill Devil Hill, the guys are starting to gig again and with them, it’s very amicable. They are some of my best friends in the world. I just felt like I was keeping a damper on them so might as well take care of this thing now. It’s a very amicable split and everybody’s happy with the whole deal. It probably should have happened a year ago, but you never know. You’ve just got to keep things open. But I’m doing my thing and they’re doing theirs and it’s all cool.
I’ve got more music in me and a lot of these songs just don’t fit what I was doing before. I was always that Zeppelin dude in the fuckin’ background with a joint in his mouth, and I loved playing metal. Then Pantera happened and we had a very heavy cross to carry for a long time. So I’ve continued working, but I’m just a lot happier now.”
Brown also spoke further of his now former outfit, describing the split as amicable:
“When Vinny Appice was in the band, it was ferocious. It was something new and something different, and in 2013, he’d decided he had enough and so he took off. So I brought my good friend Johnny Kelly who I’ve known for 25-30 years plus and it was just about 2014, and then the timing of metal was just kind of crazy.
You’ve got to get those good bookings and that kind of stuff and it just didn’t pan out and I was sitting in the back of the bus one day and I said, ‘Look man, I gotta take a break sooner or later. I’ve sacrificed 25 years of my life for this.’ And at that point it was still about half of my being. So I took about nine months off and I got the itch again and started writing songs for the solo record.
We’re still close, close friends, but it’s just if they’re being booked, I don’t want people to think that I’m going to be there, cause I’m not. That’s the one thing I want to get across. Yes, it’s an amicable split, but it’s not that big of news. I think people saw the writing on the wall, and maybe if they couldn’t, they will now.”
In the same interview, Brown also discussed of learning of the death of his former Pantera bandmate Vinnie Paul Abbott last year to heart related issues:
“Vinnie was just an incredible drummer and I really miss the camaraderie of years past. It was just another phone call of, ‘Are you sitting down?,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, who is it now?’ Never in a million years would I have thought it would be Vinnie. It’s just wild, and it’s insane. It started coming through in some of my lyrics, and I had to step back a little bit.
I had to reflect on it and it’s something you have to process. I learned the first time with Dime, and it took me years in therapy to get the fuck over. When those tragedies hit, you just pull your boots up as much as you can and you go. We just had a hell of a rhythm section, and it hasn’t been touched since, so. I don’t want to sound egotistical about it, but we were pretty fucking tight, dude … even at our sloppiest (laughs) … even at our drunkest (laughs).”
Currently Brown is working on a new solo album which he describes as “introspective” and “darker”, you can read more on that at Loudwire.
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