Twenty years ago this month, Corrosion of Conformity issued this 64-minute beast of a seventh album. It was an unexpected tour de force, released through Sanctuary Records, which had made its name picking up major label and bigger metal refugee acts either whose contracts had ended or whose companies had moved on. C.O.C. had done a run of three full-lengths and countless CD singles (it was the era of ‘let’s make $10 off three songs’; things other than weed used to be worth money sometimes instead of just costing a lot) through Columbia Records and before this 2005 wallop, their prior release was 2000’s America’s Volume Dealer, also on Sanctuary.

Now, among C.O.C. fans, America’s Volume Dealer kind of gets crapped on unfairly for the smoothness of its production and the accessibility of its sound. And to be fair, it’s a long, long, long way from the hardcore punk of 1985’s Animosity and/or the Southern-heavy epic that was 1994’s Deliverance — arguably their two pillars by which to measure — but I’ll go to bat for America’s Volume Dealer on the song level every time. “Double-Wide,” “Over Me,” “Congratulations Song,” “Take What You Want,” etc. These are killer tunes, and so when In the Arms of God was coming out, I was looking forward to it as a fan more than perhaps some others.

Two decades later, apparently I’m still patting myself on the back for it because In the Arms of God kicks unmitigated ass. But by the time they had toured for America’s Volume Dealer, drummer Reed Mullin (R.I.P. 2020) was no longer in the band — Jimmy Bower (Eyehategod) plays drums on 2001’s Live Volume — and they needed to find somebody. Not only this, but guitarist/vocalist Pepper Keenan had reignited the mid-’90s Southern heavy supergroup Down, with Bower and Kirk Windstein from Crowbar and others, which continues to this day, and so would be splitting his time between projects, one of which was very definitely at this point in history making more money than the other. So between a prior album that got early-internet panned and a distracted frontman, expectations weren’t high going into In the Arms of God.

But from “Stone Breaker” and “Paranoid Opioid” through the acoustic “Crown of Thorns” and the seven-minute jam-inclusive finale title-track, In the Arms of God is all-go and the band sound duly charged. Hooks abound through “It Is That Way” and “Dirty Hands Empty Pockets (Already Gone)” — one of the best breakouts in this band’s entire history in its later reaches — carrying its momentum into the Zeppelin-unplugged strum of “Rise River Rise” and the expansive-but-cohesive “Never Turns to More” dividing the first and second halves with an eight-minute runtime not at all shy about it’s we’re-off-a-major-label-now-so-here’s-a-jam ethic. Founding bassist/vocalist Mike Dean would take this further as Keenan went off with down to front an updated version of the oldschool trio incarnation of the band for two LPs and an EP between 2010 and 2014.

As with their Deliverance-lineup 2018 comeback, No Cross No Crown (review here) — still their most recent LP — the structure of the album is essential to the listening process. In the Arms of God essentially resets after “Never Turns to More,” with guitarist Woodroe Weatherman and Dean contributing vocals alongside Keenan in “Infinite War,” which remains unfortunately relevant. But while the first six songs are on-the-beat bangers, there’s an effort to space out in the Soundgardeny “So Much Left Behind” that works well before “The Backslider” regrounds between burl and sleek effects, and “World on Fire” declares itself in a nodding groove and one more hook before “Crown of Thorns” and “In the Arms of God” — the later of which should be taught as an example of how to do Southern metal without sounding like a cartoon character — round out.

It was the very tail end of the CD era, and the rock radio success that C.O.C. found in the ’90s had been capitalismed into oblivion. Keenan, Weatherman and Dean, in the absence of Mullin, turned to drummer Stanton Moore of the New Orleans jam band Galactic to fill the role, and with no disrespect to the memory of Mullin or what he contributed to C.O.C. up to and through No Cross No Crown, the drums on In the Arms of God are just of a different kind of character. On some level, it’s the difference between punk and heavy jazz, but Moore not only made the position his own, he owned it. However, he also had his own successful group he was part of, so couldn’t really be the full-time drummer C.O.C. wanted.

I don’t know if that’s changed or not, but Corrosion of Conformity have been in the studio — John Custer producing, as always; I didn’t mention it before now because it’s a given — throughout the last couple months, piecing together their next full-length. They’ve been doing so without Dean, who announced last Fall he was leaving the band — their new bassist is Bobby Landgraf, known for his work in Honky and for sharing guitar duties with Keenan in Down — for the first time since 1991’s Blind (discussed here), and with Stanton Moore once again stepping into the drummer position, 20 years later.

As to what the Keenan/Weatherman/Landgraf/Moore incarnation of Corrosion of Conformity might conjure in terms of craft, Keenan‘s songwriting is a long-since proven consideration, though as a fan, one worries about not having Dean‘s punk-rooted voice as part of the craft. But the underlying message they gave 20 years ago was that C.O.C. were going to find a way forward, and through Dean‘s version of the band to bringing back the four-piece for No Cross No Crown — the major complaint with which that I heard was that it was too long; eight years and zero records later, I don’t mind the “extra” — and the years of touring they’ve done since, I don’t doubt they’ll still find a way forward. “It is that way because it is,” and such. I have to think if C.O.C. could be undone as a concept, an entity, etc., the band would have been put to rest a long time ago. I think it’s too much in their blood for that.

And I’m glad.

In a spirit of looking forward to new things and new ideas while treasuring what the past has already brought us, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

What did I learn at this year’s Roadburn? That I’m unpleasant. I learned that people don’t really like talking to me, even some of my friends, and that when I walk away, it’s a relief. So I tried to walk away quickly and at least not obligate people to, I don’t know, look at me or have some kind of conversation. I also have basically nothing to say that isn’t “hi I’m terrified of life,” so I’ll 100 percent cop to my own role in making myself unbearable to be around. Anybody want to hear my middle-aged ass complain? No. Indeed not.

It’s a good thing I have a blog. Ha.

It felt good to come home this past Monday. I got a big hug from The Pecan, who very quickly remembered she doesn’t care for me all that much either and really only wants to talk to me when she needs something or her mom isn’t around. It do be like that, I’m told. My wife being legit wonderful, I try not to take the constant outright rejection personally, but as you may have guessed, fail outright just about every time. I go to bed most nights feeling like garbage. She’s been having a hard time at school — I will be genuinely surprised if I get through today without a call to come pick her up; it would be the second of this week and she didn’t go yesterday — and doesn’t have a lot of friends because she loses it and yells and wants to control everything and is autistic as fuck but hell no I’m not getting her diagnosed when some moron is out there talking about how people on the spectrum don’t pay taxes so maybe we just put them in these camps over here or whatever wacky horrifying bullshit came out of his bloated face last week while I was in the Netherlands. Fuck that.

But it’s a hard time, mostly for her, but definitely also for everyone around her. She’s got a couple dickhead boys in her class who’re gonna be giving her shit through high school. You can already see which kids it is. Normal-little-fucker whiteboys. I refuse to tell my kid not to defend herself. She’s going to need to.

Up and down week, I guess. Feel good but tired coming home from Roadburn and the energy-comedown is always a shift to make. But this isn’t my first time at the dance either and I set up this week purposefully so that it was the Buzzard video, the Dead Shrine premiere and today’s Conan review in a row basically as a favor to myself — those are all projects I enjoy and am interested in writing about, and in the case of the latter two, there’s a back catalog for context and I enjoy exploring that as well, if you couldn’t tell in the part about In the Arms of God above.

Zelda update: I just last night finished the Tower of Gods and let The Pecan pull the Master Sword from sunken Hyrule Castle in The Wind Waker. I never played it when it came out because I didn’t have a GameCube and thought it looked stupid, but it’s a pretty great game and my head was up my drunk ass in my 20s in just about everything except getting married and listening to stoner rock. I’m running an emulator on my computer with a couple quality of life mods and it’s been great.

Hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks for reading, for giving me space to vent without getting shit for it. I value that more than I can say. Next week is full. There’s news to catch up on (always) and premieres slated for Slow Draw (full album, Monday) and Burning Sister (video, Tuesday), as well as a review of the new Hippie Death Cult live LP and so on. It’ll be a good time, and thanks if you tune in for it.

Don’t forget to hydrate. It’s getting hot out there. And watch your head as you go. Listen to the new Turtle Skull.

PS – Thanks to everyone who bought merch in this round. It’s down now, but I appreciate the support and got about $450 in off of that that goes to paying bills and buying coffee. Helps keep me afloat and feel like I’ve contributed to the house this month, so yes, thank you.

FRM.

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Dio, Master of the Moon (2004)

In 2004, legendary vocalist Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, also Elf) was already 21 years removed from his band’s legendary debut, Holy Diver (discussed here), released in ’83 after a stint fronting Black Sabbath that resulted in two landmark LPs in 1980’s Heaven and Hell (discussed here) and its 1981 follow-up, Mob Rules (discussed here). And what a 21 years it had been. Aside from another brief stint with Black Sabbath for 1992’s Dehumanizer (discussed here), the entirety of that time was devoted to the development and sustaining of the Dio band, which thrived across a holy trinity that Holy Diver began and 1984’s The Last in Line (discussed here) and 1985’s Sacred Heart completed, and survived both the rising of a generation fueled by the adrenaline of thrash and the grunge and nü-metal movements. They might not have been playing arenas across the US and selling millions of albums by the time 2004 came around and the band presented their final studio album, Master of the Moon, but there was no question they — and he — remained in righteous form and had enjoyed a sprawling influence that continues to spread even 15 years later.

Dio released three albums in the 2000s. The millennium was greeted by Magica, a narrative concept piece that reportedly had two more chapters in progress at the time of the singer’s death in 2010, 2002’s Killing the Dragon, and Master of the Moon. In hindsight, the 2002 offering was a landmark. It represented a shift in mindset that saw Dio understanding his place — and I say “his” instead of “their” because it was very much him guiding the direction of the band — in the sphere of heavy metal as a classic act. One might think that automatically obviates relevance, but to listen to Killing the Dragon, the singer and the band around him both sound liberated by it. After struggling in the ’90s to find his identity amid a shifting generational landscape and producing some great material in Lock up the Wolves (1990), Strange Highways (1993) and Angry Machines (1996), but not finding nearly the same audience response attained for his efforts in the mid-’80s, and getting Magica out of his system, Dio was able to be the heavy metal statesman his voice had always been so suited to being. Master of the Moon, a crisp 10-song/46-minute all-pro offering with Craig Goldy on guitar, Scott Warren on keys — mixed low in trad-metal fashion but filling out the sound nonetheless — Jeff Pilson on bass and Simon Wright on drums, may have been the last new studio record the Dio band put out, but it was also emblematic of the new era of the band that Killing the Dragon began. It built on that album and featured memorable songs crafted in a style that didn’t need to play anymore to ideas of modernity and found the singer and the band around him able to do what they did best. And they did exactly that.

Opener “One More for the Road” is a barn-burner in the “Neon Knights” or “Stand up and Shout” tradition, and the signal it sends is both a dogwhistle to the converted that they should know the formula being put to use and a display of the enduring vitality of that approach. The subsequent title-track deals in feelings of isolation via the kind of epic imagery that was Dio‘s stock and trade. I was fortunate enough to interview him at the time and I asked him about the lyrics to “Master of the Moon” itself, thinking it was an allegory for a kind of post-9/11 political sphere, the booming (literally) War on Terror and all that, but no, he told me he liked that idea but he wrote it for a friend’s teenage son feeling alone and misunderstood. This ability to translate the mundane into grand imagery was an essential facet of what made Dio the larger-than-life persona he was, on record as well as on stage and in the history of heavy metal more generally. As a backdrop for his powerful vocal delivery, songs like “The Man Who Would be King” and “The End of the World” indeed touched on the prevailing mood of the time, but in a vague and roundabout way, so that the stories being told were allegories, personal and otherwise. The swagger in the verses “Shivers” set up a standout hook backed by a theatrically creepy keyboard line, while “The Eyes” tapped into the kind of chugging stomp that made Dehumanizer sound so mechanized, and all the while, images and settings and characters populated the songs to give listeners paying attention something to dig into more than just another hooky melody or another cool riff. That is to say, there may have been a formula at work, but the paint on that canvas was fresh.

Perhaps the most personal-seeming of inclusions on Master of the Moon was “Living the Lie,” in which the identifier “I” was only used once. The lyrics dealt with the cloying desperation surrounding fame, and seemed to be as much about those seeking to hold onto the past as those outside trying to get in. The first verse ended, “She was never in the circle, or the round would be a square/And the more she seemed to want it, oh the less they seemed to care,” and the culture of fame was taken into direct observation later on:

If you’re looking at tomorrow
To forget about today
Then the past will be your future
And it’s there you’ll always stay
What about the pictures that smile from magazines
The ultimate temptation, all our kings and our queens

This led to the conclusion: “Such heat and too much pressure, not worth the try/No more for them, now it’s I/And no more living the lie.” There are of course multiple ways to read it, but particularly as “Living the Lie” was backed by the declarative “I Am,” it seemed to be Dio finding strength in self-actualization and having the sing-along chorus to prove it. Its long fadeout probably should’ve been the end of the record, but the trademark woman-as-evil-temptress “Death by Love” and the more doomly closer “In Dreams” follow, the latter tapping some of the keyboard feel of The Last in Line, but not quite living up to the apex set by “I Am.”

I don’t think anyone is going to pitch Master of the Moon as being Dio‘s most essential work. Were he alive, I don’t think Dio himself would make that claim. But the course that Master of the Moon continued coming off of Killing the Dragon showed a way for Dio to move forward and be who they were as a band without cowing to the trend of the day. Of course, after the touring cycle for Master of the Moon, Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice would have a by-any-other-name Black Sabbath reunion as Heaven and Hell, and Dio‘s final studio performance would be on their 2009 album, The Devil You Know (review here), and his final tours would be to support that release before he ultimately succumbed to stomach cancer, his legacy long since cemented and unmatched among heavy metal frontmen.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

I expect today to be tense. The Patient Mrs. has a phone interview for a professor job in New Jersey at one of her several alma maters, and that kind of thing always defines a day. Of course she’ll nail it — because that’s what she does and the school in question, like any fucking place that has any sense at all, would be lucky to have her, what with the utter brilliance and unparalleled dedication that I so much admire in her — but still, I think she’s nervous. There is no doubt in my mind of her greatness, and she shines in that kind of situation, talking to people about her work, because she’s driven as much by passion as by professionalism. She gets excited and that gets others excited. It’s fun to watch.

However, I won’t be there to watch it. I’ll take The Pecan and roll down to the mall like the old man I am and buy the new record from The Claypool Lennon Delirium at Newbury Comics, because I live in Massachusetts and that’s the place to buy records. Plus there are a lot of colorful things to show the baby and he likes that. I might treat myself to the new Candlemass as well. We’ll see.

Next week will end with shows in Boston and New York as I follow Kings Destroy down the I-95 corridor and maybe sit in with Clamfight for a guest vocal spot, but even before that, it’s a busy time. Here are the notes as they are today:

MON 02/25 Codeia video premiere; Snowy Dunes video premiere.
TUE 02/26 Mountain Tamer single premiere; Volcano review.
WED 02/27 Orbiter track premiere.
THU 02/28 Almost Honest track premiere.
FRI 03/01 Possible song premiere or Hexvessel review.

Some of that will change, obviously, but it’s a start. This week was absolutely slammed. I don’t know if you noticed and I won’t fool myself into thinking you did, but there wasn’t one day this week with anything less than six posts. I think it was Wednesday had eight! It was completely overwhelming and I was out of my mind for much of it, but we got here and it’s done now, so whatever. My inflated self-importance will get a couple hours to recover before I start in again on Monday’s stuff and maybe make a playlist for the next The Obelisk Show, which will air next weekend.

Always something to do. 10 years later.

As ever, I wish you a great and safe weekend. Forum, Radio, merch at Dropout:

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