{"id":20441,"date":"2014-06-23T00:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T00:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=20441"},"modified":"2014-07-21T22:04:49","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T22:04:49","slug":"album-review-corrosion-of-conformity-ix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-corrosion-of-conformity-ix\/","title":{"rendered":"CORROSION OF CONFORMITY – IX (2014) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY
IX<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nCandlelight (2014)<\/span>
Rating: 7.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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There once was a time when North Carolina\u2019s Corrosion Of Conformity was the coolest band on the planet. With Blind<\/em> (1991), Deliverance<\/em> (1994) and Wiseblood<\/em> (1996) they casually wafted into the room, destroyed all those that sat in awe and moved on.<\/p>\n

With various musical alterations and line-up changes C.O.C. has always remained \u201ccult\u201d. Arguably they should\u2019ve been bigger, but with guitarist Pepper Keenan employed elsewhere with Down it\u2019s up to the original formation to bring the goods.<\/p>\n

Mike Dean (bass \/ vocals), Reed Mullin (drums \/ vocals) and Woody Weatherman (guitar) were responsible for those early cult items such as 1985\u2019s Animosity<\/em>, but for me 2012\u2019s self-titled slab<\/a> didn\u2019t quite cut the mustard. Riff-wise it just lacked the energy and it was arguable that the vocals just lacked the depth and weight to give the band that formidable edge.<\/p>\n

And so we come to C.O.C.\u2019s ninth chapter; and as expected it\u2019s another fluent expression but unfortunately once again it\u2019s an episode that just lacks fire in the vocals. Of course, Dean was once a master of that crossover vocal sneer, but with the band still incorporating a slightly doomier ingredient his tone doesn\u2019t sit comfortably, whereas Keenan and former vocalist Karl Agell had a lazier yet deeper drool.<\/p>\n

The prime examples of this conflict come with the likes of \u2018On Your Way\u2019, which delivers the goods musically but not with the voice. \u2018The Nectar\u2019 reminds one of the C.O.C. of old, however; it has an old school Bad Brains sort of speed and zaniness about it. But this isn\u2019t the C.O.C. I\u2019ve grown to love, because in spite of their early cult offerings, for me the real heavyweight punches came via the aforementioned trio of Blind<\/em>, Deliverance<\/em> and Wiseblood<\/em>. Now the band seem caught between two styles and yet lack the weight \u2013 or a second guitarist \u2013 to churn out consistently good groove-based melody.<\/p>\n

Having said that, IX<\/em> is a marked improvement on the self-titled opus, and there are some fine tracks to behold. \u2018Trucker\u2019 is a sun-blessed lump of tumbleweed nestling on hot sands; in lazy manner and blues-tinged elegance, it shifts pace with ease. Elsewhere, the other treats come via \u2018Elphyn\u2019 and \u2018Tarquinius Superbus\u2019, but for all of their elephantine grace, they remain cowering in the presence of those ID career classics. And that\u2019s the problem; it\u2019s so hard to judge C.O.C. away from those three albums. Keenan was such a presence and yet it\u2019s something we must, if possible, move away from and with IX<\/em> C.O.C. have provided an infectious batch of jams based around some truly natural, well-balanced riffs that are more than happy to fuse together a stoned sort of fluidity with darkened sprigs.<\/p>\n

The band can be regarded as one that is solid if patchy, and while IX<\/em> is still a world away from those three classics (which I must stop mentioning!) it\u2019s a record that gives me hope in the original line-up. I was worried that the band was beginning to lose itself, even with the Keenan-driven In The Arms Of God<\/em> (2005), but when you hear songs such as \u2018The Hanged Man\u2019 and the aforementioned \u2018On Your Way\u2019 I still sense that C.O.C. is back on its feet. And while the vocals will always bother me to some extent, this is still a half-decent album.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CORROSION OF CONFORMITYIX Candlelight (2014)Rating: 7.5\/10 There once was a time when North Carolina\u2019s Corrosion Of Conformity was the coolest band on the planet. With Blind (1991), Deliverance (1994) and Wiseblood (1996) they casually wafted into the room, destroyed all those that sat in awe and moved on. With various musical alterations and line-up changes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corrosion-of-conformity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20441"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20447,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20441\/revisions\/20447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}