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Corrosion of Conformity, No Cross No Crown: Casting Stones

corrosion of conformity no cross no crown

More than 35 years on from their beginning, Raleigh, North Carolina’s Corrosion of Conformity are a band like none other. Affectionately abbreviated as C.O.C., in their long career, they’ve moved from East Coast hardcore punk and thrash to becoming widely influential innovators of Southern metal and heavy rock, releasing generation-defining albums like 1994’s Deliverance (discussed here) and 1996’s Wiseblood (discussed here) after having already made a mark early on with rawer offerings like 1984’s Eye for an Eye debut and the next year’s Animosity.

Since his arrival in the band alongside founders Mike Dean (bass/vocals), Woody Weatherman (guitar/backing vocals) and Reed Mullin (drums/backing vocals) for 1991’s transitional outlier Blind, Pepper Keenan has become a key presence in C.O.C.. He played guitar on Blind and handled vocal duties for the first time on the track “Vote with a Bullet,” but would take the reins as frontman by the time Deliverance came out and see the band through their defining commercial statement and ascent to a point of influence for a generation of heavy rock. Keenan‘s tenure as guitarist/vocalist continued through Wiseblood, the underrated 2000 outing America’s Volume Dealer — often maligned as a cash-grab for its smooth production, but actually some of the tightest songwriting the band has ever done — and 2005’s In the Arms of God before his duties as a member of the Southern heavy supergroup Down took priority.

Dean, Weatherman and Mullin — the last of whom did not play on In the Arms of God — eventually grew restless and pressed on, issuing a self-titled (review here) in 2012 and an also-underrated follow-up, IX (review here), as a three-piece that both found them freer to touch on their punk roots and resulted in a fascinating summation of the band’s tenure as a whole. As Down dwindled, Keenan returned to the fold circa 2014, and the once-again-foursome signed to Nuclear Blast for the release of No Cross No Crown, their first album in this incarnation in some 18 years and a work that many likely doubted would ever come to fruition.

Frankly, that it exists is enough to make it one of 2018’s most pivotal full-lengths. No Cross No Crown is the album for which many C.O.C. fans have clamored for years, written in the studio by the band with longtime producer John Custer at the helm and very, very much aware of what its listenership wants in terms of speaking directly in sound and style to the Deliverance/Wiseblood era of post-Sabbath groovemaking and harsher, Southern-stylized edge. C.O.C. pioneered this aesthetic, and after stepping away from it for more than a decade, songs like “Cast the First Stone,” “Forgive Me,” “Wolf Named Crow” and the six-minute chug-nodder “A Quest to Believe (A Call to the Void)” find it still fits them easily and smoothly.

With a few runthroughs, “The Luddite,” “Cast the First Stone,” the more patiently bluesy “Nothing Left to Say” and the signature boogie “Little Man” feel less like they’re playing to form than rediscovering it, and though No Cross No Crown unquestionably hearkens to the CD era with a bordering-on-unmanageable 15-track/57-minute runtime, a series of interludes in the intro “Novus Deus,” “No Cross,” “Maitre’s Diem,” “Sacred Isolation” and, arguably, the atmospherically-minded four-minute title-track that separates “E.L.M.” and “A Quest to Believe (A Call to the Void)” ensure that the band’s persistent hooks and unflinching craftsmanship boasts due attention-holding variety as well.

corrosion of conformity dean karr

Again, it’s very much a record that knows the stakes and knows the audience to which it is communicating. That comes through in the balance of the production as much as the songwriting, and while in part as a result of the style in which it’s working it doesn’t have the same sense of urgency driving it as did the IX or Corrosion of Conformity LPs issued by the Keenan-less trio version of the band, there’s no question that in performance and chemistry, this group stands apart in their level of execution in a way that makes it extraordinarily difficult to hold knowing what they want to do and who they want to be as a band against them.

No doubt that any outfit with the sheer reach of audience C.O.C. can claim — global, generation-spanning, etc. — will have their backers and their detractors, and certainly much more than when America’s Volume Dealer surfaced, the scope of how the conversation between them has changed. As someone who’s been a fan of the band since Blind, I’ll say the truth of No Cross No Crown ultimately seems to lie somewhere in between.

It is a reunion album. It’s their, “okay, now we’re back together and we need a record” record. By the time they get down to the final movement of “No Cross No Crown,” “A Quest to Believe (A Call to the Void)” and “Son and Daughter,” the pervasive feeling is that statement has been made and they’ve reestablished their footing on the ground that was there waiting for them all these years, but their return to it is still unquestionably one of the most welcome underground heavy events of the decade, and their delivery is simply undeniable.

From “Novus Deus” and “The Luddite” onward, No Cross No Crown is pro-shop through and through, and one can see that even in the structure of the tracklisting, which presents the material in batches of an interlude, two tracks, an interlude, two tracks, interlude, two tracks, etc. throughout. Each section proves that Corrosion of Conformity, even if they’re in the process of shaking the rust off working together creatively, have more to say than one could have reasonably asked or expected, and the album succeeds in its goal of manifesting the spirit and drive of Deliverance and Wiseblood without simply aping a sound more than 20 years gone, as the energy and thrust of “Cast the First Stone” and the swaggering catchiness of “Old Disaster” alike prove.

The prospect of a new C.O.C. record with the KeenanDeanWeatherman and Mullin lineup has been hanging over the head of their many followers since they first got back together to play live several years ago — and truthfully, much longer than that — and if No Cross No Crown did have anything to prove at all, it was that this band could still do this thing. The simple answer is they can, and where 35-plus years from getting started, most artists still active have long since slid into a mediocrity of form in playing to what’s expected of them, C.O.C. here sound reinvigorated and offer a reminder to all willing to hear it of a big part of what made them who they are in the first place. It might need repeat listens to sink in for some, but earns them readily and grows into a richer experience each time through in such a way that to call it anything less than triumphant would be unfair.

Now, will there be another?

Corrosion of Conformity, “Wolf Named Crow” official video

Corrosion of Conformity, “Cast the First Stone”

Corrosion of Conformity website

Corrosion of Conformity on Thee Facebooks

Corrosion of Conformity on Twitter

Nuclear Blast website

Nuclear Blast on Thee Facebooks

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One Response to “Corrosion of Conformity, No Cross No Crown: Casting Stones”

  1. Scott Graham says:

    I was fortunate to catch one of my favorite bands COC just recently in Detroit as they opened for Black label Society. and was abel to pick up ” no cross no crown” my favorite song is “Forgive me ” definitely a combination of Deliverance and American volume Dealer. COC was on fire that night .

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