“It’s not about all the dreams that we left here – it’s what’s inside of you, you know it’s true.”
What is your favourite Corrosion of Conformity era? The Raleigh, North Carolina quartet have certainly had a few in the 44 years since their founding: their early days as a hardcore punk band, the Blind era that I always lovingly describe as a punk band playing metal, or the engine-oil-stained southern stoner rock ushered in with 1994’s Deliverance. No matter which is your favourite, the band’s latest effort, double-album Good God / Baad Man, is bound to have something for you.
The album is divided into two hemispheres: Good God, the first side, plays more on the heavy, pissed off side of the band’s sonic identity, with tracks like single “Gimme Some Moore” and “Good God? / Final Dawn” calling back to the band’s earliest days as a pack of angry punk kids paying homage to their hardcore idols. In fact, a cover of “I Love Livin’ in the City” by legendary New York hardcore band Fear was chosen as the B-side of “Gimme Some Moore’s” limited run as a 7-inch single, and by no coincidence.
Good God serves as a true alloy of all the defining elements of the band’s classic discography, with the angst of their punk rock days, the grit and grease of their southern rock albums, and with Blind’s brand of sludgy, high-intensity heavy metal the common ground. The side can be summed up in a line from “Gimme Some Moore”: “Better to be pissed off / Than to be pissed on”.
Where Good God is focused on the history of Corrosion of Conformity, side B, Baad Man, is more so focused on paying respects to the band’s southern rock forefathers in the likes of Grand Funk Railroad, ZZ Top, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Title track “Baad Man” kicks the side off with that signature ZZ Top cool oozing from every pore, and the cowbell-bejewelled chorus that wails “Ooh, hoo / He was a real bad man” is total Grand Funk worship.
“Lose Yourself” fades in with a very short synth intro which, admittedly, is not entirely necessary, but is one of a few tracks with somewhat experimental soundscape intros. For example, “Handcuff County”, a track straight out of the Tres Hombres wheelhouse, starts with the sound of a train horn and police radio chatter.
Once the main riff of “Lose Yourself” kicks in, it is immediately obvious that there is definitely more of an edge to it than the latter-discussed parts of Baad Man, with less of the honky-tonk jamming so characteristic of this side in favour of something more like a Blind-era track where the southern rock elements are inter-woven as more of an undercurrent. When I put it like that, it’s not sonically unlike something from 1996 Blind follow-up Wiseblood.
“Lose Yourself” has the effortlessly cool vibe of fellow stoner bands Acid King and Orange Goblin’s Coup De Grace era, with returning drummer Stanton Moore’s excellent performance much of the reason for this. Moore doesn’t overplay the part, but maintains an up-tempo, high-intensity style of playing throughout.
On this point, it is worth saying that Moore does a fantastic job respectfully filling the shoes of late founding member Reed Mullin behind the kit, who passed back in 2020. Mullin was often a definitive part of Corrosion of Conformity’s sound, complimenting the rest of the band’s playing with creative parts where most would’ve just played the most obvious. Mullin’s ability to finely walk the line between creative drumming whilst not falling into the category of overplaying was a skill to say the least and helped to set the band apart, making his certainly not an easy drum stool to fill, but Stanton Moore consistently proves across Good God / Baad Man he is absolutely capable of tastefully doing just this in the late founding member’s stead.
The band also include a couple instrumental tracks throughout Good God / Baad Man which are a bit more on the experimental end of things, which serve most of all to build an atmosphere before stand-out moments on the album. For example, “Bedouin’s Hand” is a droning, reverb-soaked guitar solo with and almost eastern feel to it, and leads perfectly into side-ender “Run for Your Life’s” epic intro riff, which feels like something between Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and Black Sabbath’s “Wheels of Confusion”.
Another Zeppelin–Sabbath comparison can be drawn between their classics “The Battle of Evermore” and the iconic bass intro of “N.I.B”, respectively, and Baad Man’s third track “Mandra Sonos”, a lute solo. Once again, this leads into the high-intensity track “Asleep On the Killing Floor” that ultimately ends with Pepper Keenan yelling “wake the fuck up!”, a moment reminiscent of Karl Agell’s through-gritted-teeth “No one said anything!” that ends Blind’s “White Noise”.
These two instrumental tracks compliment the live, loose rock n’ roll aspect of Corrosion of Conformity’s sound, feeling like onstage jams between songs whilst also breaking up the onslaught of hard rock a little too, allowing the more epic moments on either side to really hit you hard, much like how “Shallow Ground” precedes iconic Blind track “Vote with a Bullet”.
The album finishes with the epic “Forever Amplified”, again uncharacteristic of Baad Man’s typical funkier rock n roll stylings, this time in favour of a feedback-soaked style more aligned with the band’s sludgier tendencies typical around the Deliverance era and sonically not dissimilar to contemporaries High On Fire. The track is emblazoned with solo after ripping bluesy solo, and is leant a Badmotorfinger-esque Soundgarden angle by New Orleans Jazz vocalist Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph of Stanton Moore’s jazz funk band Galactic as she wails away over the track here and there not unlike Chris Cornell was so iconic for during the Badmotorfinger era on tracks like “Slaves and Bulldozers” and “Jesus Christ Pose”.
“Forever Amplified” feels particularly massive thanks in part to the well-controlled production work of Warren Riker that maintains the band-in-a-room sound so essential to a band like Corrosion of Conformity. Riker delivers flawlessly throughout this entire album with the production that confidently knows what it has to do at all times in order to most compliment the band. Additionally, Moore’s drumming during the song’s two-and-a-half-minute long intro, with tom fills as epic ornamentation, is fantastically placed, and helps to build the song up as the epic finisher that it has to be.
Legendary heavy metal band Corrosion of Conformity are well and truly back with double album Good God / Baad Man. C.O.C bring everything to the table here, from their roots in the Raleigh, North Carolina punk scene through to the sludge metal they would ultimately become so iconic for, and, through some careful sonic alchemy, blend it all together. Good God can be thought of as Hell, with its uniquely Corrosion of Conformity high-attitude brand of Blind-era heavy metal, and Baad Man as Heaven, with its generally more upbeat ode to the honky-tonks of yore; ZZ Top, Grand Funk Railroad, Lynyrd Skynyrd – all bands who inspired the band’s southern rock tendencies. If Good God / Baad Man proves one thing, it’s that nobody else sounds quite like Corrosion of Conformity, and this album is a real deep dive into the ‘why?’ following the tragic passing of founding member Reed Mullin back in 2020, who is certainly honoured all throughout.
8/10
Good Good / Baad Man releases on the 3rd April through Nuclear Blast and can be pre-ordered here.