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Corrosion of Conformity Interview with Mike Dean: The Power of Expression

Next Tuesday, July 1, is the release date for Corrosion of Conformity‘s aptly-titled ninth album, IX, which also serves as the band’s second full-length through Candlelight Records since their reboot with the trio lineup of bassist/vocalist Mike Dean, guitarist Woody Weatherman and drummer/vocalist Reed Mullin, following on the heels of their 2012 self-titled (review here) and subsequent, Scion A/V-sponsored Megalodon EP. The latter, which was also released in 2012, seemed to solidify many of the ideas of the former, and helped to affirm the grooves and the varied approach that C.O.C., now 30 years on from their first album, Eye for an Eye, would present. IX (short review here), is consistent in progressing this roughness of sound and steady, rolling feel, but as cuts like “Denmark Vesey” and “Tarquinius Superbus” show, C.O.C. never completely let go of their roots in hardcore punk. Knowing that at any point they could immediately take off at top speed adds an element of danger to the proceedings, and Dean, Weatherman and Mullin sound only too happy to revel in it.

The latter track, which appears deep into IX‘s side B sandwiched between the high-grade Southern heavy rock of “The Hanged Man” and “Who You Need to Blame,” is particularly interesting for how directly it plays one side off the other, its five-and-a-half-minute runtime split between raging forward motion and righteous nod. It serves to summarize what C.O.C. have done best since coming back as a trio, which is to foster an approach simple enough in its elements but based around a quality of songwriting that speaks to the band’s legacy both in albums like 1985’s Animosity and 1996’s Wiseblood while still forming something new from them. In both their style and how they’re developing within it, Corrosion of Conformity circa 2014 are geared toward a natural sound and focused on capturing a live feel in their recordings. As an album, IX not only succeeds in this, but shows the band sounding more comfortable and confident in their approach as well.

We were on a bit of a rough line in terms of connection, but in the interview that follows, Dean discusses how they’ve arrived where they are, including their longtime collaboration with producer John Custer, with whom Dean worked on this album as an audio engineer, the progression they’ve undertaken since the self-titled was put together, touring, and how finalizing material in the studio as it’s being recorded can help give a record a sense of spontaneity. Also discussed at the end is Dean‘s time in Kyuss-offshoot Vista Chino and what the future might hold there. After some drama with the booking, Corrosion of Conformity will head to Australia this summer, and they have plans in the works for a West Coast tour this fall and will no doubt continue to support IX for the foreseeable future, keeping their momentum going at a clip to match their speediest riffing.

Full Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

So the Australian tour is happening?

Yeah! We just dug in and found somebody else who was good. We got mixed up with a bad player that just imploded, and we were like, “Oh no…” Still going.

You’ve already been to Europe. Is it possible to road test new material after it’s been recorded?

We’re really just getting into the newer stuff, just playing a couple songs, so it’s starting to get that way. But we’re really just starting to work again. A lot of the material on the record wasn’t super-rehearsed. It was kind of… The second time we performed it was with microphones in front of us. You know, the record has some stuff that was in the process of being born, but it’s not fully soaked into our psyche yet, and I’m kind of just at the point where I can really talk coherently about what the hell happened.

Do you prefer to work that way, or was it just timing?

I think sometimes we do prefer to work that way, or prefer to at least have some of the material be that way so it’s not stale, so there’s a creative type of vibe to it. There’s a lot to be said for working out all the bugs, and really orchestrate, and making something precisely and the power that type of preparation can being, but especially with the computer involved, there’s a lot of potential to suck some of the life out of stuff a little bit, so if you can combine the pressures in a coherent way over the course of a record, you can kind of enhance the variety a little bit. That’s what we were hoping to do.

What songs on the record are that new?

The newest ones. “Brand New Sleep,” the track that opens the record, was something we all just barely knew, and I don’t think either of those other guys thought it was gonna make the record. They were just kind of going through the motions of, “Oh, we’ve got a few extra songs, so we’re gonna go through this process making them and throwing them away,” and they didn’t realize I came up with a vocal line and was taking it seriously. In fact, when we recorded it, we didn’t bother to use headphones. We just managed the bleed in the room. We had this informal kind of feeling from Woody and Reed. I basically bowed out and started recording it, and we were just kind of having fun. I don’t think they thought we were going for a keeper take or anything like that. We were just getting such a nice bleed, manageable kind of bleed, in the room, that it would’ve spoiled it with headphones. They were a little surprised when I put a vocal on it. That one was a little like that, and in a big way, was a sort of uptempo, Sabbath outro just being added impromptu right before we recorded it. So that would be one, and I would say that “The Hangman” was a little bit like that.

I wanted to ask about “Brand New Sleep” opening the record. How did it go from a throwaway to…

A feature track? (Laughs)

Yeah. To leading off.

I kind of had it in the back of my head I wanted it to be a big part of it, but I was being a little devious, keeping my cards close to the chest. I think basically when we set up our mix, John Custer and I, the first song that we mixed was “Elphyn,” and John basically had the desk setup for “Elphyn,” and I just ran “Brand New Sleep” through it, and being built from the same materials, it kind of sounded awesome. We sent those two tracks to Brad Boatright, who was going to master the record, just to give him an idea of what was coming, and to see if it was something he could work with. He was enthusiastic about it, and he’s enthusiastic about most music, so of course he’s gonna be…

You mentioned John Custer, and you’ve worked with him for decades at this point and you’ve been together with Woody and Reed for so many years. Is focusing on a newer track like that a way to keep it fresh for you?

Uh, yeah. Definitely. Our relationship has evolved with John, and some of his approaches to working with musicians have changed a little bit. He likes to work with an engineer, likes to be hands-on. For this one, we really wanted to take it out of the computer a lot more and to the desk. If we had the resources, we might not even use the computer, if I had a tape machine and a few more accoutrements. But given what we have, we decided to really get John to have a place where he had his own perspective on what was happening performance-wise, and through nepotism, I just kind of gave myself the job as engineer. It’s something I’m interested in and want to keep perfecting, towards my own aspirations of producing other people’s music and not having it be a sham where you have some musician you’ve heard of be a producer, bit what did they really do. Getting my hands dirty is something I’m interested in, so it’s a good situation being not too obsessed about my performance. It gives me some real work to do rather than being preoccupied, and it kind of allows John to stand back and have some perspective, and we kind of tag-teamed on the gear like that. Originally, John had a very specific idea in mind about certain parts, going back to Blind and Deliverance, and now he’s more about letting the performance happen and seeing where it goes, and like ourselves, he’s reached a point with the over-emphasis on perfection that just makes a lot of today’s music really boring and really makes you kind of smell a rat. Basically, we’re kind of about a performance that has some emotion to it. When the performance gets too perfect via the computer, you start to smell a rat, and you start to wonder if the can play any of it (laughs). It’s just not where we’re coming from. He’s right there with us on that. It’s been good, the way things have evolved working with him. It’s something that, while we’ve had this relationship for a while, it’s a way to keep it fresh.

I heard a couple of the Sourvein tracks you recorded.

Music like that, that has a lot of space in it, will make you sound like a genius if you sit there and put up a few microphones, because it sounds tremendous. There’s space built into the music. Something like a thrash metal band, with a lot of notes, is trickier (laughs).

Well you guys have a little bit of both. Is it a challenge for you to engineer some of your own faster material?

Nah, not really. Not in this environment. The major thing with that is the drums, and we’ve got a guy that’s been hitting the drums for a long time and has a knack for it and has this sweet little drumkit that just sounds good, so yeah. The source really determines the outcome more than some kind of attempt to drag it out of the original instruments. All this technology is overrated and superfluous. It’s just a tool, man. It’s like, “Do I have the DeWalt, Skilsaw or Matika?” It doesn’t really matter if I know what I’m doing. Start with a sound idea.

Did you engineer the Megalodon EP?

Megolodon, yeah. That was Custer and I. That was kind of a learning process in this room that we inherited that used to be a commercial studio that went out of business. We started renting it out and sharing it with another guy, and now we’re kind of in the venture together. That was a different process. Rather than having an analog console, that was creating a lot of analog stems and using old compressors and crazy stuff as a reaction to using software plugins, which I was starting to really hate. That was super-hands-on too and just getting through that experience was instrumental in wanting to do it there again and take our time and not have the meter running, but also to upgrade the situation a little bit.

What did you take away from that and bring to the album? What was the lesson learned?

That a little bit of pressure… There was a little bit of pressure on us then to turn it around quickly, so we came up with some tracks pretty quickly. It could’ve been a disaster, but it was actually good. And then, out of necessity for that, we had to keep moving quickly, and it made us realize that we enjoyed moving quickly. During this project, there was some times away from the studio, but when we got back to the studio, we actually were, again, forced to keep moving. We like to keep it moving along and not get stale, not labor any particular point too long, be it a vocal idea that’s not quite working out or something like that. Yeah, you need to apply yourself, but if it’s not happening fairly quick, then it means try something else or move on and come back. Just keep it moving. Don’t labor the point.

Will you tour the US in the fall?

Yeah. Starting in August, we’re gonna do some stuff on the West Coast. I’m really having a hard time not saying who it’s gonna be with, but it’s not 100 percent sure who it’s gonna be with, but it’s gonna be an awesome bill that we’re putting together, and it’s got some good… A little bit of worthwhile 1980s technical, Santa Cruz, California, hardcore nostalgia, a band that’s been reborn with some crazy celebrity new members.

Not to give it away…

And maybe a different act with a kind of famous drummer turned guitarist kind of in the stoner rock, Thin Lizzy-meets-Band of Gypsys vein, from the desert. Could be some stuff like that. Could be a pretty insane package, maybe some of the celebrity members of the former could come up and jam with the latter. (Laughs). That’s what we’re hoping. Hoping for a little West Coast thing, but I can’t really say (laughs).

Last time I saw you on stage was with Vista Chino. I talked to John Garcia maybe two week ago about his solo record and asked if there’d be a second Vista and if so, if you’d be involved. If there was a second album, would you play on it?

There’s a lot of moving parts there. I would totally do it, but I think what’s happening right now, with John doing his solo thing that has basically be in the works for years, and he finally just had to break away and do it. I respect that. And Brant [Bjork]’s got his solo thing tooled up, so I think the Vista Chino thing is probably on hiatus, best guess, for 18 months or so. At that point, if it pops back together and they want me involved, I would be thrilled and really stoked to do it. Those guys are just in another mode right now. There’s an option on their contract to do it, so I think that could be incentive, and I think just listening to the record and taking into account some of the musical chemistry that was happening with those guys, they’d be foolish not to do it. Whether I’m involved or not is irrelevant, but if asked to do something, I would definitely be an enthusiastic participant.

How were those shows for you?

Fucking cool man. Especially at the point where it’s fun and challenging to try to do your own take on some Kyuss material. I’ve never been in any cover bands, not because I’m like some kind of awesome purist about original music or something like that, but frankly, I think I gravitated toward original music because I was always intimidated about performing something that people were already familiar with, where there’s this expectation, where you could get away with creating something new a lot better (laughs), if you have the capability of creating something. I preferred to step out there in front of people with something where there’s no expectation. So then, to throw yourself into a situation where you have to hold up the end that Nick Oliveri or Scott Reeder (laughs) held up, the pillar of musical history, it’s a little crazy. It kind of worried me a little bit, made me sweat a little bit, but I thought we got a good response and that’s cool, but the most rewarding experience was doing the new Vista Chino songs and also improvising a little bit, which Bruno [Fevery, guitar] and Brant are just really comfortable doing. There’s no fear there. So yeah, we could meander a little bit and it would sound held together, and that to me was really exciting. That held a lot of promise. The three of us were a little blindsided by John’s decision, the timing on this thing, but once he talked to us about it, I get it, and I get a feeling that record’s gonna be awesome. Plus, it’s like, how greedy do I want to be? Just to be asked to be included in that whole experience at all was really cool. Whatever the future brings, we’ll embrace.

Corrosion of Conformity, IX (2014)

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Corrosion of Conformity website

Candlelight Records

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4 Responses to “Corrosion of Conformity Interview with Mike Dean: The Power of Expression”

  1. Toxic Scott says:

    It’s BL’AST, isn’t it? BRING THEM TO THE EAST COAST PLZ.

  2. Jace says:

    Oh its definitely them n Brant bjork fer

    ure

  3. Deaconcrowe says:

    I agree it’s probably Bl’ast, but who are the celebrity members? I know Grohl remastered/mixed the reissue & William DuVall (Alice in Chains) was a guitarist on it. Will be interesting for sure.

  4. Aron - Orogen says:

    Nick Oliveri and Joey Castillo are the new Bl’ast rhythm section.

    So I guess they would be the celebrity members.

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