INTERVIEW // CORROSION OF CONFORMITY
Back in the mid-80’s, Corrosion of Conformity were the hardcore band to be into. If you didn’t have that nuclear skull patch on your denims then you might as well have handed in your punk card, but since then they’ve been called stoner, sludge and heavy metal, they’ve been signed to labels huge and not-so-huge and they’ve come dangerously close to calling it a day. On the eve of the release of their ninth album, the appropriately-monikered “IX”, we caught up with vocalist, bassist and founding member Mike Dean to talk rock history, awkward touring schedules and the perks of being a three-piece.
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Words: David Bowes // Photo: Fabiola Santini
ou’re just about to release “IX”, and your last album was self-titled. Is there some kind of stripped-back message at play here, what with not having album titles, per se?
We weren’t looking for titles, we were more looking for a title that would find us and I just liked the impact of this. I think I might have been listening to a lot of Black Sabbath’s Volume 4 and I kinda got the roman numerals stuck in my retinas there. I thought it might look good and it’s the ninth studio record so we called it IX, though once that decision was in motion I noticed that we’re still in the era of Down IV, with the roman numerals, under the various instalments, so I was “oh, great!” I don’t know, though, I’m not that great on titles. Deliverance never had a title until the last minute and that song, “Deliverance”, was going to be a throwaway until those guys suggested that I have something to sing on it. When I did, the theme of it kind of fit the situation, where the band was almost about to cease to be right on the verge of arguably their, at the time, most important record to date and we were kind of delivered from that by a lucky twist of fate. There’s some poetry and symmetry to that but this time we weren’t encountering any of that kind of serendipity.
Your self-titled album was released only two years ago, which is the shortest period between albums that you guys have ever had. Did the writing for this one run particularly smoothly?
Well, we’re just trying to be prolific. We had actually hoped to get it out a little sooner but we just got busy with various auspicious distractions. I spent a lot of time going on the road with Vista Chino, which was a great opportunity, and great fun, and that kind of directed me away from the struggle a little bit. We actually did produce an EP between the self-titled and this record, the Megalodon EP, and that was kind of an online-only thing. We’re in the process of making that up as a vinyl-only release at some point soon with some unreleased tracks as well. That’s kind of what I’m in the studio working on.
Given this is your second album in your current line-up, have you settled back into working as a three-piece, or was there never really any problem in that respect? It comes pretty naturally to do the three-piece thing. The only thing to remember is that each instrument has its place and there isn’t really anywhere to hide. You can’t hide behind a wall of guitars. When things are going well, and you’re playing the correct thing at the correct time, it has the potential to sound brilliant and clear but if you make any kind of gaffe, it’s right there. There’s more space to try things and it’ll actually come across, whereas in a four-piece you had to choose your spots and listen more, play in a more complementary way. Either way, we definitely had a lot of ideas between the three of us so it wasn’t like it was hard coming up with material or anything like that. I’m thinking 72
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CORROSI
Summer Issue
at some point soon we’re going to revisit the four-piece Deliverance line-up. I don’t have any official timeframe for any of that happening but we’re getting indications that it’s time to work that out on the calendar with all concerned – Pepper Keenan, Phil Anselmo, Jimmy Bower, Mike Williams. See what the Eyehategod and Phil and the Illegals tour schedules are looking like and plan our endeavours around that. We still want to be one step ahead with our plans but we don’t want to do anything that’ll overshadow our efforts at the moment because we’re proud of our record and we think we’re going to get some good response from it.
How does it feel being on Candlelight compared to the major label days?
The whole landscape of doing music as a business has changed so much so it’s hard to make a direct scientific comparison but you could tell at the time that Sony had the vibe of the Roman Empire on the verge of collapse. You could see the signs. A child could have walked in there and seen the unsustainability of that endeavour, and we could see going into it that we weren’t going to live up to their ridiculously inflated sales expectations, so the idea from the start was to get the most that we could out of the situation. Not necessarily financially but just to enjoy the ride, do some things that might be good for our