The American sludge metal scene has thrown up its fair share of legendary bands, and after an appearance by Crowbar at The Globe in Cardiff recently, next up is the arrival of some pals of theirs – North Carolina’s Corrosion Of Conformity – at the same venue in May. No strangers to our capital, their kinship with Cardiff goes further than you might expect, as Chris Andrews found out.
It’s not very often that the interviewee cares much where the interviewer is from, so you can imagine the shock I get when Pepper Keenan, frontman of metal legends Corrosion Of Conformity, launches into a pretty decent Cardiff accent when I declare my whereabouts – or “Phil Campbell country!” as he dubs it. “I’d love a day off in Wales, it just never seems to happen,” adds Keenan.
The question is, though, why are COC hitting the UK now? With their last album No Cross, No Crown now five years old, was it just a case of getting back out there? “Well, we are working on new music, but it is also just to get out there as we missed a bunch of UK and European stuff because of COVID. It’s taken us three years just to be able to get here, ya know – so we scheduled Desertfest and some other shows, just to get back in the game. It’s been too long.”
The pandemic hit the music scene hard on multiple levels, so would we have seen new material from the band by now? “Probably not! But you would have seen us around a hell of a lot more. Sitting around sucks.”
With shows in the bag and new music on the way, then, what sort of stuff can we look forward to from the stoner rock icons? “The biggest thing right now,” says Keenan, “is transitioning to a new drummer” – COC founder member Reed Mullin having passed away in 2020. “It feels like my right arm has been cut off. But we have our good friend Stanton Moore, who played on our record In The Arms Of God [2005], with us again. To be honest, we aren’t getting younger, so at this stage in the game, we are focusing on songwriting. At the same time, COC has never been a band to rush things, and if it ain’t right then it’s wrong.”
Keenan – who, in the late 1980s, became COC’s sixth vocalist in seven years, and is by far the longest-serving member in that role – is also part of Down, the New Orleans supergroup with Phil Anselmo from Pantera, Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein and Jimmy Bower of Eyehategod. Both Down and COC have been majorly influential in the doom/sludge realm of heavy metal: how, as a guitarist, does Pepper differentiate between suitable riffs when writing?
“Well the main difference with COC is that I sing and play guitar; playing with Stanton is kind of a different animal. In my brain I just try and keep them separate – I’m sure some of the riffs could transfer back and forth, but in my head, I know what COC is supposed to sound like and I know what Down is supposed to sound like.”
Does that suggest that writing with COC is more lyric-based?
“Yeah. I like to have an idea of where we are heading before we start writing – an album title or a theme. Once you’ve got that in your head it frees up a lot of direction you can go into, instead of just putting out a plethora of songs that you put a title on at the end.”
The last 30 years have seen the band evolve into stoner rock territory, but this isn’t the way the band started out. Corrosion Of Conformity started life in early-80s Raleigh, North Carolina, as a hardcore punk band more akin to the likes of Circle Jerks and Minor Threat; Keenan himself didn’t join the band until 1989, heralding a change towards a slower, more metallic sound. Was Pepper himself a direct influence on this change of style?
“We were kind of all on the same boat. I was somebody that understood COC and understood the potential of what those guys could do and we all wanted to evolve, so we just opened our minds. Back in the day, that [hardcore] scene had become stiff and we felt that we’d been there, done that; it was important to take that attitude with you, but we wanted to do something else as musicians.”
So if somebody had never heard Corrosion Of Conformity before, what album in their back catalogue would Keenan point them to? “I’d have to say Wiseblood or In The Arms Of God if they were looking in terms of ‘bang for your buck’.”
So, after more than 30 years, what’s the best part of being a member of Corrosion Of Conformity? “The camaraderie, exploring music, playing shows. I love making records, but I love touring just as much, it gives us an opportunity to see the world and make friends around the globe. I don’t take that lightly. It ain’t about the fucking money. If it wasn’t fun, we wouldn’t be doing it.”
This incarnation of Corrosion Of Conformity last hit Cardiff, with Clutch in tow, circa 2006 – that’s a show that people in the south Wales scene still hold dear today. So if the show at The Globe can deliver half as much as that one, then Cardiff metalheads are in for a great night.
Corrosion Of Conformity, The Globe, Cardiff, Thurs 4 May
Tickets: £22 (sold out). Info: here
words CHRIS ANDREWS