"We're probably going to play close to two hours," said Keenan, who also fronts Corrosion of Conformity [ tickets ]. "I like it like that. The fans seem to dig it, too. They seem so ferocious for Down stuff, so we might as well just play by ourselves."

On Sept. 25, Down will celebrate the release of its first full-length album in five years, "Down III--Over the Under." Keenan said one factor in the delay of "Down III" was Hurricane Katrina ravaging the band's hometown.

"Oh, man, it was just kind of an in-the-works thing since before the hurricane. We had been talking about doing something and I guess the urge kept getting stronger and stronger," Keenan explained.

"After the hurricane, we decided to blow off some steam and go to Europe--no strings attached, no record deal. Just go play some shows, have some fun, see what happens. The response was overwhelming, to say the least."

Every show was sold out, even without promotion, an album to push or the help of a record label, he said.

"The European fans were really adamant about us getting our s--- together," Keenan said. "They loved the band and they really inspired us to get going. So we started to work on the record as soon as we got back from Europe."

Down retreated to "a little place across the lake in the middle of the swamps in Louisiana" to create "Down III."

"We get together and jam--we do it like we did when we were 15 years old," Keenan said. "We're pretty hard on each other and we go at it, you know? It's fun. Phil writes the lyrics. We all write the music. It's just a very jam-oriented thing. We're in a big circle and we just go at it."

Keenan said that the new album's secondary title is apropos.

"That was something Phil had come up with, and I thought it was genius for all the things we had been dealing with since before the storm and Phil's back surgery, the passing of Dimebag [Darrell Abbott of Damageplan, and formerly of Pantera], people we lost along the way," he said.

Abbott was shot and killed by a deranged fan on stage at a Columbus, OH, club in December 2004 as he performed with Damageplan. Meanwhile, in 2005, Anselmo, who long suffered from neck and back pain, underwent a surgical procedure that left reconstructed bone fragments and a rod in the place of the degenerative discs in his spine. In footage filmed for VH1's "Behind the Music" about Pantera, Anselmo loosely termed it the worst back surgery ever.

"So many things are gonna drag you down," Keenan said. "You just gotta keep your head up, man, and that kind of seemed to wrap up everything with three simple words. What we were about, what the record was about and trying not to use negativity as a force to write songs.

"Phil's doing core strengthening stuff daily. He's in better shape than he was when he was 25 years old. He's still going. He's still doing it. It's been two-and-a-half, three years, and he's still going. He's in better shape. He's not on pills. No more pain pills. It's a massive relief."