MIKE DEAN (COC): We were a hardcore band that was challenging the boundaries of it and challenging the little subculture with bits of unfashionable things like Ted Nugent. We were really inspired by Black Flag, and by Void, a band from D.C that was really underrated. They were on all the Dischord compilations, and they had a split album with Faith way back in 1983 or so. They were this intense...metal-meets-really-fast-hardcore with real psychotically strange arty twists. Very demented. They influenced us a lot.
ETHAN SMITH: This friend of mine, Matt Matthews, we went to see C.O.C. at the Culture Club, which was a huge wherehouse with absolutely no acoustic properties at all, and this is when Eric was singing. It was always really funny because it always took half a minute for the music to come back from the other side of the room, so when C.O.C. were in that period, it was really loud and because of the room it sounded..y’know. We’d sit around & discuss our theories on C.O.C. J.D. was always like, “these are four guys fighting with each other on stage” or something, and me & Matt Matthews were just laughing hysterically because Matt was like, “Man, it sounds like a fucking airplane just landing in front of us!” That is what they sounded like. Then it stops, Woody’s guitar amplifier goes, EEEEEEEE!!!! And then everything else goes, “RRRRRRRRR!!” and one of the four guys is jumping around looking really mad. It was really funny. Another funny thing Matt said was, “I find it hard to ignore C.O.C. so I just judge the performance by the intensity of Mike Dean’s facial expressions” or something like that, it was really good. (Laughter)
ERROL ENGELBRECHT: I did really like the old COC when Eric was in the band. To me, that was really the only COC. To me, that was their peak but a lot of people really liked their later stuff but I thought they were listening to too much Iron Maiden. With Eric in COC, at first Eric and me didn’t click. He almost knocked the shit out of me once at one of our first meetings but he realized later that I was all right. Me and him were drinking buddies. I kind of preferred hanging out with people from a slightly older crowd then people who were my age or younger.
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY 1984 INTERVIEW AT THE CATHEY DE GRANDE IN LOS ANGELES FOR INK DISEASE MAGAZINE.
Ink Disease: Would you guys say that you are the biggest band from Raleigh?
Woody: Yeah, we have just been around the longest.
Mike: We won by default. Everyone else broke up.
Ink Disease: When are your shows? When an out of town band comes through?
Mike: No, we can get about 150 to 200 people to show up.
Woody: You see, there are three cities that form a triangle-Raleigh, Chapel
Hill and Durham. They are all about thirty minutes away from each other.
Ink Disease: What bands have influenced you?
Woody: Black Sabbath.
Mike: Bad Brains.
Woody: Yeah, Bad Brains. Definitely.
Ink Disease: You guys are pretty metal.
Woody: Some metal, not all..
Mike: Some metal sucks pretty heavily.
Al Flipside: How about Black Flag?
All: Yeah! Totally!
Mike: Z.Z. Top!
Ink Disease: How long have you been playing your
instruments?
Woody: I have been on guitar for three years.
Mike: Five years for me.
Reed: I have been playing drums for two years.
Ink Disease: (to Eric) How long have you been singing?
Woody: He hasn’t started yet. (Laughter)
Ink Disease: Did you ever take lessons or did you teach yourselves?
All: Just ourselves.
Woody: We can’t read music. I wouldn’t mind being able to.
Mike: I understand chord structure.
Ink Disease: Do you have any goals for the band? To get on MTV or something?
Reed: We want to get out of this legal trouble.
Mike: We played at this big battle of the bands type of thing, and we got into
our second song and the place went wild. The security people claimed that we
were ripping equipment and stuff. Things went wild.
Woody: The reason we played was to play to some people that would never come
to see us. Our friends came to see us and they were the ones that were slam
dancing. The sound people kind of freaked out and decided to remove them from
the stage. Not by asking them to leave but by picking them up by the hair and
kicking them in the face. Eric got into a scuffle with the soundman and the
soundman just kind of fell off the stage and was trampled by the crowd.
Eric: A broken arm and a couple of broken ribs.
Woody: He was kind of sore about that. The police were kind of sore about that.
So even though they were holding poor old Eric by the hair and there were four
or five of them on him they charged him with three counts of assault on a law
enforcement officer, which is kind of ironic since they had a billy club against
his neck.
Reed: and now supposedly the promoter is suing us for ten thousand dollars.
Mike: But I think that is a lot of hot air.
Woody: My mother got charged for assault.
Mike: For slapping the stagehand.
Woody: And she was found guilty.
Mike: We had to go to court.
Woody: She slapped him a couple of times. She got in a few good hits.
Mike: Now that she has already been convicted and not appealing. She slapped
the fuck out of that hippie, man.
Woody: All she wound up with was a thirty dollar fine so I think it was worth
it.
Eric: Gee, if I could get out with a thirty dollar fine..
Woody: She has been talking about it ever since.
Eric: Gee, if I could get out with a thirty dollar fine..
Woody: She has been talking about it ever since.
Mike: She is our hero. I was being chicken shit, I was afraid to rampage because
of the financial ruin that the police can inflict on you. But she was fucking
rioting, man. I tell you man.
Ink Disease: How are you guys going to get out of this situation? Why did they
even let you leave town?
Eric: Because I am paying my lawyer so much. Motherfucking better do something
with all of the money I’m paying him.
Reed: He (Eric) is the only one that is in trouble.
Woody: He’ll end up probably having to do community service work. We tried
to hold a benefit show for him but we didn’t make any money because we
had to pay all of the bands.
Ink Disease: Do you have anything else to say? What do you think of Void?
Reed: Ooohhh.
Mike: Void used to be one of the most severe bands I had ever seen, but they
have kind of lost it.
Woody: I saw them and they were kind of drunk.
Mike: I thought that they were more idealistic then that.
Reed: They all want to join the marines.
Ink Disease: Any last comments?
Reed: You shouldn’t fear Satan.
Ink Disease: Well, that was your last chance. What do you say, Woody?
Woody: (he is banging his head against the wall) Okay, that’s it.
Mike: Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with you.
The rest of the band: Ooooooohhh!
SAM HICKS: Harassment aside, Corrosion Of Conformity were fast on their way to becoming state legends and the unofficial leaders of North Carolina Hard Core (NCxHC) when their Eye For An Eye (TXLP-04) LP was finally released on their own No Core Records in 1984. This granted them with the honor of becoming the first hardcore band to record an LP for an out-of-state label. Eye For An Eye is the most readily available of their early work, and showcases their Black Flag influenced sound of that time. C.O.C. soon developed a sound all their own that would spearhead another movement known as crossover. Crossover was a combination of hard core/punk and heavy metal that few other bands were also experimenting with, and C.O.C. soon found themselves riding on the crest of the newest "wave" in music. Their second LP Animosity (Death-002/Enigma-72037-1) features this new sound and came out on Death Records, a subdivision of Metal Blade Records in 1985. C.O.C. have continued to record numerous albums and are, hands-down, the longest-lived band of the N.C. Hardcore era. It's difficult to imagine that some of the scenes which followed might even have developed without the existence of this band.
ETHAN SMITH: My roommate during the “Eye For An Eye/Animosity” period was Wayne. I gave him a bunch of tapes that had stuff like Wire, New Order, Joy Division, and some Kate Bush, all for the idea to really drive everybody in the van into a complete rage. Which happened in Texas. Wayne was like, “Man, I just got to hear something other then heavy metal, it’s all I hear from those guys, just give me something I can play while those guys are asleep and I’m driving”. So I gave them these tapes and then in Texas Eric got mad because Wayne had put on Kate Bush, and Eric threw all of the tapes out the window onto the highway. And Wayne, from what I understood, turned the van around in the middle of the highway and went back and picked them all up. And afterwards everyone in the van was really quiet and didn’t say too much. (Laughter)
JON WURSTER: Yeah, those guys were certainly the ambassadors for NC punk. I met COC right-hand man Wayne Taylor (then known as Wayne Kerr) through his then-girlfriend Sara Romweber back in 1984. I was a big fan of southern pop (Let's Active -the band she drummed for) as well as hardcore. I first met Wayne and first saw COC at a frat house in Philly in the summer of 1984. This was with Eric on vocals. They played with Tales of Terror, Rysteyett (sp) and Raw Power. My main memory of that show is seeing Reed brushing his teeth on the sidewalk. Funny what sticks with you. Next time I saw 'em was at the same frat house in '85. This time they were a three piece. That was my favorite line-up. I remember standing next to Wayne outside of the show and a longhaired kid from New Jersey coming up and saying he was in a band called Natas Evil. I thought that was super-lame. The kid got up onstage and sang "Prayer" with them.
ERROL ENGELBRECHT: I drew that (the COC skull) for them. They came out later on and said that I had ripped that off from another band, that they had the same similar type of look but that I had just revised it. Who knows? Maybe I saw something and it stuck in my head until I drew it later but I don’t remember, you know? I liked drawing skulls with spikes and stuff like that, that was part of what I was into. The whole thing was I drew it up, they used it, I noticed that they were starting to make a lot of money on it, they made t-shirts, stickers and what not. I was going to get it copyrighted, I had what they call a poor man’s copyright and they were like, “Well fine…do that and we’ll just come up with a different logo”. I think I was dealing mostly with Reed. He offered to give me I think it was two or four hundred dollars but I certainly remember just getting two. It might have been a little more but it certainly wasn’t four hundred dollars, and that was it. It kind of..they all came from well to do families and they all had money and I couldn’t see where it would have hurt to pay me what was fair. And that was it, I think I got thanked on one of their records in the liner notes. They gave me the credit for it, but that was about it. People have talked about me in the old days, things that I did, that I ripped off a kid’s skateboard and that it was mean to do that. I gave it back to him but the you know the whole thing about punk rock was to look out for each other and all of those politics and it just seemed to me that they were contradicting everything that they were saying that they believed in. They were talking about situations like people and corporations ripping off other people and here we go doing it to other people. That is all in the past, I don’t really give a shit. There is no point in crying over spilt milk.
1984 was a big year for the band. Besides suddenly coming into their own as a monumental force, they also seemed to attract a lot of negative attention in the forms of police (and other forms of) harassment. The band participated in a ridiculous local “battle of the bands” showcase entitled (I am not making this up) “Battle Rock 1984”. The bands set resulted in a brouhaha that resulted in Eric being arrested for three counts of assaulting a police officer, and one count of assault and disorderly conduct. What had more or less happened was the stage manager freaked out on one of the bands fans in the audience (onstage at the time) and had assaulted said fan. Some other members of the audience grabbed the guy and gave him a taste of his own medicine. He got back onstage and turned off Mike Dean’s amp, so Eric grabbed him and threw him off the stage again, which resulted in some injuries. This is when the local police intervened and gently arrested Eric. He resulted in a mess of legal trouble-but was still allowed to leave the state and go on the bands upcoming U.S. tour that summer.
JOHN AUSTIN (as reported in Southern Lifestyle issue seven): Recently, flyers
at Broughton high school created quite a stir. The fliers contained satanical
references which offended school officials and parents. The police and the courts
tried to prohibit the show, which was to be held at the Brewery. Owner Kenny
Hobby was unable to contact the bands for cancellation until hours before show
time. He eventually allowed the show to take place as scheduled.
Alcohol Law Enforcement officers stormed the all ages matinee looking for underage
drinkers. Mysteriously the Brewery closed the next day. “We needed to
make a few repairs,” Hobby stated. COC were able to explain the fliers,
their music and the police dilemma at a press conference held in the parking
lot of Sadlack’s Heroes on Hillsborough Street. In a public statement
read before local newspaper, radio and television reporters, they cited the
press for negative coverage, denied any affiliation with the Satanic culture,
and questioned the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment.
It is humorous to think that there was a time when stuff like this really did happen. Remember, parents and officials thought this kind of music and look was dangerous and upsetting. . You can take for granted that nothing like this would ever happen in this day and age. And you would probably be right. But happen it did.
JOHN AUSTIN (as reported in Southern Lifestyle issue seven): Are the police and courts malicious in their attitudes about punks? Only time will tell.
Towards the end of the year, band tensions in COC arrived. The U.S. tour saw that the band was generating a buzz in the punk rock community. However, there were problems that some of the band members had with their choice of Eric as singer. Although a riveting frontman` for the band, the rest of the band soon decided to become a trio. This all went down at the very end of 1984.
ETHAN SMITH: Eric and Reed didn’t like each other anymore. I went up and
saw them in Philadelphia after their first nationwide tour was over. It was
with Ristetyt and Raw Power and someone else. I went up and it was like, “this
is weird. Eric and Reed didn’t like each other anymore.” And it
seemed Mike and Woody were stressed out about the tension. They got on the stage
and before they played Eric had punched Reed and Reed just kept going “I
want you to pick up my glasses, man. Just pick up my glasses, okay?” and
Eric was like “Fuck you, man! Fuck you!”. So they were obviously
not liking each other anymore and Eric left or got kicked out after a little
while. Eric was a cool singer, he seemed a very Henry Rollins influenced type
singer, you know? Not “intense” Henry, more like old “football
player” type Henry.. but with Mike singing, it sounded cool to hear discordant
unintelligible vocalizing coming from him. (laughter)
OLD INTERVIEW I DID WITH WAYNE AND ETHAN WHEN THEY PLAYED TOGETHER IN NINETIES RALEIGH BAND ORIFICE:
Ethan: I think they had asked me to sing for No Labels before they asked Wayne.
They asked me to sing for C.O.C., too.
Brian: (to Wayne) They asked you to sing for them, too.
Wayne: Yeah. I totally declined that offer, man.
Brian: Well, you were the roadie for a long time.
Wayne: Well, that is not singing for them, though.
Brian: You were sort of the fourth member. That is how I saw it.
Wayne: Oh yeah, I was..definitely. I loved that, I thought it was great. I mean,
at the time, I really enjoyed it. It was great going everywhere and meeting
all of the people, and man..”Animosity”, that tour, where it was
the three piece, which I fucking told them when Benji left, I said, “Man,
you just need to be a trio. Mike can sing, Reed can sing, Woody can sing”…that
was awesome, it was so good. I mean, everyone liked it..(To Ethan) don’t
you agree?
Ethan: Oh yeah.
Wayne: They were fucking awesome, man! And um..I was glad to be a part of that.
But I really don’t think about it.
JON WURSTER: COC played later that year in Allentown, PA with DRI at some kind of rec center. They were in the middle of one of the trickier songs off of Animosity and Mike broke his bass. The way I remember it, the neck actually snapped. They stopped playing and everybody seemed very shocked that the bass had broken. There was a weird long silence as Mike changed instruments. Without a word the band launched back into the song; not at the beginning but at the exact place they had stopped. I remember thinking how strange it was because nothing was ever said between the three of them as to where they would begin the song.
During this period, C.O.C. reached a saturation point. The “Animosity”
record broke down the doors for the band, & their hard working touring ethic
& onstage ferocity put Raleigh on the map nationally & internationally
speaking; it seemed like during this period the band played virtually everywhere
in the country. In the middle of 1986, inevitable band tensions & burnout
seemed inevitable. The band almost called it a day but instead decided to re-group
& look for a new vocalist, as Mike Dean was growing tired of the role as
lead singer. After trying out a few candidates such as Randy from Atlanta’s
Neon Christ, the band turned to longtime friend & soon to be ex-Ugly Americans
vocalist, Simon Bob Sinister. The idea looked good on paper. After a few initial
local shows, the band decided to record the tracks that would make up the “Technocracy”
e.p. The funny story behind this was that the band, as a three piece, had already
recorded another version of the same material in Los Angeles in early 1986.
The band recorded once again with Bill Metoyer at Track studios, & the results
were stunning. Although the general public wouldn’t hear this recording
for several years, the intensity of the band on this recording marked the high
water peak of the band. Simply put, on tracks the “Crawling”, “Happily
Ever After” & especially the ferocious title track, C.O.C. played
as if their lives were staked on it. Mind numbingly tight & vicious, perfecting
the blend of Black Flag, Black Sabbath & Bad Brains that C.O.C. based their
career on. Make no mistake, this was the shit.
But since by the time Simon Bob joined, it made sense to re-record the “Technocracy”
material. The band re-recorded all of the tracks in Raleigh with the assistance
of Dick Hodgin. The results just weren’t as strong as the first version
in every way. The singing of Simon Bob, although not bad, was much more suited
for the Ugly Americans then C.O.C., & although the extensive packaging &
liner notes of the record were also impressive, it was still a bit of a letdown.
Around the same time, the band spent a lot of time being able to finally work
on new material. This was something the band virtually had no real chance of
doing before since they always seemed to be touring. Almost all of this new
material was very strong. They ended up with virtually a whole new set that,
if properly recorded, would have been one monster record. There was Woody’s
“Leaders”, which was a catchy little number with a great middle
part. Then there were numerous Mike Dean songs, like “History Lesson”
& “Beautiful Hills”, both being some of his best songs yet.
They recorded a little four track of all of these long forgotten songs that
I really wish I had. It was amazing. Great music was to come, and the band seemed
to be on the right track in the very near future.
WOODY WEATHERMEN (COC): Yeah, we tried it (Simon Bob) but he didn’t really fit our sha-bang at the time...he’s a cool dude but he didn’t really fit. The whole deal with that was we were looking for a singer and he was a good buddy of ours so we started jamming...we had a good time but Technocracy was a...weird album.
Mike Dean interview in Not Yet Decided, issue Number 13, early 1987.
NYD: Let’s hear about the new album and tour..
Mike: It’s called “Technocracy” and it will be out in a few
weeks. It’s a four song EP. They are songs we have kept under our belts
for awhile & now we are finally going to release them. It is going to be
the last record that has anything to do with Metal Blade. It’s interesting.
It will be the first record that has a singer on it besides Reed & me. Actually,
it is the first record that we have done in a long time. We have a lot of new
material; we are going to record an album real soon, too. And if you can tape
the EP from a friend that has already gotten it that is probably the best thing
to do. It has a high list price. I don’t think we are going to see any
money from it anyways, so what the heck..but it does have an interesting insert.
NYD: How did you get Simon Bob as your new singer?
Mike: The Ugly Americans were breaking up. I even encouraged them to continue,
I don’t know why they did it but when they did we got Bob so we could
concentrate on our instruments more. Plus, I had pretty much shredded my vocal
abilities to their..ragged ends.
NYD: All of your new songs sound like an almagation of Black Flag & Black
Sabbath. How do you respond?
Mike: Um..I suppose.
NYD: You wear those influences fairly well.
Mike: (mad cackling laughter) DO WE?!
NYD: You sure do! I saw that recent spread Mike Gitter wrote about you in that
magazine Creem Metal. How do you feel being in a magazine like that amongst
other hot rockers like Ratt & Bon Jovi?
Mike: It certainly stands out from that trash, it is amusing and obnoxious.
NYD: Do you feel that when you were singing your lyrics to people in audiences
everywhere that you were screaming to deaf ears..preaching to the converted?
Mike: Definitely. There has to be a new way of getting people’s attention.
NYD: Did you ever think about handing out lyric sheets or something?
Mike: It could be useful. I think it would be more interesting to hand something
out that wouldn’t be political dogma, & it wouldn’t be lyrics
but..that it would just be something artistic that would take people’s
minds out of their normal phase. You know, something that they could pick up
on.
NYD: My big complaint about punk shows these days is that you already know what
is going to happen before it does. You know what the bands will sound like,
you know how the audience will react..
Mike: I know exactly how the audience is going to react like. It kind of bums
me out. Sometimes I wish that people would listen and calm down but then again
its good to have a reaction, a spontaneous reaction. They typical stale reaction
is starting to wear pretty thin, especially after all of these years.
NYD: Are you tired of people labeling you with this whole “pioneers of
thrash metal” kind of stuff?
Mike: Actually, I am tired of being tired of it! I was tired of it for a long
time. We kind of set ourselves up to do it, in a way.
NYD: Yeah, I remember a long time ago when we first met was when you used to
worship Exodus!
Mike: Bullshit! Bullshit! False..
NYD: (interrupts) “False Metal”?
Mike: Ha! That was like our road to..being visible or audible to that audience.
A lot of that stuff is pretty worthless.
NYD: How do you feel about your home base?
Mike: Raleigh, North Carolina?
NYD: Yeah..
Mike: Well…it’s a really good place now that the scene is dead!!
(Laughter) There are a lot of great new bands. It will stay pretty cool as long
as we don’t call it a scene. It is more creative now then it was. Since
there have been more clubs now for music, for out of town bands, I have seen
a lot of good music. Probably more then when we go out on tour..
Unfortunately at the beginning of the year, tension once again reared its head, as Mike became disenchanted with the band, & also the choice of Simon Bob as vocalist. The band, yet again on the west coast, were on a hastily arranged tour booked by some of the SST folks, who also were thinking about having C.O.C. a part of the SST label, a possible dream come true for the band. Mike parted ways with the band out west, & the rest of the band went home to look for a replacement for Mike Dean.
I remember this period quite well. I lived with Mike & a few other guys in a little house on Boylan Ave., & we lived down the street from Reed’s place, dubbed “the Mansion”. There were understandably hurt feelings between the band & Mike, especially with Reed, who had lost his rhythm section partner. Mike also was more or less the main writer in the band, penning arguably a good seventy-five percent of the band's material. He would be hard to replace. Phil Swisher, ex-Bloodbath & UNICEF member, was brought in to replace Mike. He very quickly learned Mike’s parts, & with a slight bass distortion sound a la Discharge, the band was back in business. They soon started to play lots of shows and do more touring. Yet there was definitely something missing. The band continued touring constantly but with Mike taking most of the new material with him, C.O.C. were back to ground zero in terms of new material. They still had a handful of new songs but band creativity seemed to be stifled with the absence of the bands main songwriter. Reed, arguably one of the most important individuals involved in making things happen, also burned out-& when he did, there was definitely a large void. Soon, other people would fill this void, & other bands would also fill the void, but on a profoundly more local level, as opposed to the national level that C.O.C. brought to the table. Never again in Raleigh would there be a local band that would bring so much attention to the area from other places, at least in terms of that style of music.
In the future, the band would lose Simon Bob & spend the first of many “down periods”, with band members not getting along or doing other projects for the time being. Mike was long gone. During one of these periods, Woody managed to get both Mike as well as myself to help him record this project called Snake Nation. We recorded a very poorly mixed record that consisted of mostly old Mike Dean songs that were meant for COC before he quit. We all took turns trying to sing and even covered an old Blue Cheer song. We almost covered an old Flesheaters song. If we had done that, it would have been great. Awhile later the record came out near the end of the eighties and we played three shows around the area, then parted ways. Snake Nation left a lot to be desired but to tis day, people come up and say how much they liked it, so what do we know. COC spent almost two years doing nothing until getting Karl Agell as the new singer & Pepper Keenan as a second guitarist to join the band. The emerging band was decidingly more metal sounding. Some of the upcoming “Blind” record was good indeed-but it seemed weird that it fell under the old COC name, continual flogging of political issues & lyrical themes aside. Most old fans thought it was too rock and moved on, and the band gained a lot of newer fans.
The band as a three piece is what I remember the most, it was arguably the
band at their peak. Since I wasn’t around at the time of Eric Eycke fronting
the band, I missed out on that. I remember the first time I had visited Raleigh,
COC were well into being a three piece, and Eric had just moved back into town.
He got up to sing “Indifferent” with his old band and the Brewery
went absolutely bonkers. But I saw numerous COC shows when they were the three-piece
lineup, and they were awesome. There were great shows in Pittsburgh, New York.
Once back in Los Angeles they played at this place called the Balboa Theatre
and I remembered watching a particularly vicious set they had played. When they
went into the fairly recent “Technocracy”, it was played at such
a tightly breakneck speed that I overheard the guitar player of the Oxnard California
band Dr. Know (Kyle Toucher, who was standing next to me watching them form
the side of the stage) blankly look on in amazement and muttered, “Jesus
Christ!” to himself. If you put this version of the band up against what
is currently going on in terms of aggressive music, they would eat just about
everybody alive.
That however, was a long long time ago.
SEAN LIVINGSTONE: COC made the Raleigh hardcore scene. People moved to Raleigh because of them. Nowadays, they’re too easy to flog. Their worst decision ever was Karl. As for Pepper, he has a lot to answer for. As for others, people just speculate too much on what could have been and don’t want to move on.
CHRIS SCHNIEDER: I don’t think that I could be mean about it; bands always have their own thing. Most bands that have stayed the same for twenty years usually suck just as bad as the bands that have changed. C.O.C., they just took a little too much time off at that point in time, & when they came back it was pretty much with a different sound, much more metal. Mike wasn’t singing, Reed wasn’t singing. Karl was a good singer but it still wasn’t the same. Woody took guitar lessons and had learned how to play guitar solos really well, which had really changed their sound. I suppose that they wanted to be successful, to become a bigger band. It’s understandable that they wanted to do that but they definitely lost something.
BRIAN GENTRY: I think, probably like most people, that they were fantastic as a three piece. They had so much raw, angry energy, and a lot of it seemed to be coming from Mike. The first two or three times I saw them their equipment fucked up and they could only play two or three songs and Mike stormed off in a rage. The best performance I had ever seen by them was at the Cat’s Cradle in 1986, I believe. Now…well, I think they could be really good if they just pulled things together, but it isn’t happening. I did see them here in Austin once recently and they really surprised me.
JON WURSTER: I was never a very big "crossover" fan but COC as a trio was in my opinion the very best of that stuff. I liked that they remained more punk than metal during that period. I was not at all into the idea of the metal/punk alliance. To me those were the guys who "we" fought against in high school. Seems pretty childish now, I guess! COC kinda lost me when they embraced southern rock and "got the boogie." To me it's not really the same band. People might say the same thing about Superchunk!
BILL DALY: I saw COC twice the first year I was here. I thought they were just okay. I later heard their early stuff with Eric singing and thought that was by far their best stuff. The songs with Mike Dean singing were really good as well. But Eric had an intensity and conviction that I never saw live with their singer named Simon Bob. As a matter of fact, I never heard it heard again in COC. I have tried to objectively listen to every release that came out in the years that followed. Aside from an interesting Thin Lizzy riff in a song, I have not being the least bit interested in their music.
REED MULLIN (COC): We’ve definitely gone through a lot of metamorphous. We're all growing together in our style. Early on we were knee deep into hardcore/Punk rock, which was as vibrant, new and fresh as we could have ever been. We were playing with all the best, big bands then-- Minor Threat and Black Flag. We were having a great time playing that stuff. Then that got really generic and all the great bands realized it and they were getting bored with it all and many of them broke up and left the scene. They came back as Fugazi, Rollins Band. We were still doing our thing. God, this is sounding too generic so we started experimenting with other influences. We had to make it more interesting for ourselves.
In ongoing years, COC kicked Karl out of the band & Pepper became the new singer. When this happened, Phil quit in support of Karl, & the two started Leadfoot, where they remain to this day. Mike Dean rejoined his old band afterwards to re-record Swisher’s bass parts, and soon the “Deliverance” record came out. There is some good hard rock sort of songs on it, but Mike’s return didn’t exactly bring back “those good old days”. When I first started to write this project, I was very aware that most of the people I have talked to, like myself, were huge fans of Corrosion Of Conformity in their original lineups. Along the way since Pepper Keenan has been in the band, the focus has mostly shifted to him, & although on all of the Pepper era recordings there is obviously lots of Pepper to be found, there never seemed to be a lot of, say, Mike Dean. It is difficult to envision the band today as having a lot to do with the version of the band that I (as well as many others) really loved, as the obvious changes that the band has made has been over & done with a long time ago. At the very best, it could be said that the Pepper led COC of records like “Deliverance” and “Wiseblood” could be termed “serviceable”, as each record sports at least a few decent moments. However, the last record, “Americas Volume Dealers” culminated with Reed quitting the band in what could be termed a pretty messy split. Then after some touring with drum replacement Jimmy Bower, the band went into hibernation mode again while Pepper toured in a variety of projects while Mike and Woody worked on a new project called the Let Lones, a three piece that included a new drummer named Merritt. Very recently, the Let Lones were put on the shelf indefinitely so that the three remaining members of COC could work on a new record. Amazingly the bands newest record “In The Arms Of God” is a brutal experimental heavy l record that I liked. Shrouded in a bit of mystery, the band continues to this day, approaching over twenty years as a band and a confusing (to put it lightly) history to go along with it. Despite anyone’s opinion of the band in regards to their various records, you have to give it up to them
BILL DALY: Since the early 90's, COC seemed to be more interested in playing the corporate formula game and writing derivative classic rock/metal music in an effort to gain more mainstream appeal. The punk artistic aspect of them was long gone. I remember having a conversation with Mike Dean in 1999. He told me he thought that COC had alienated their original fans a long time ago. I concurred with him completely.
MIKE DEAN (COC): There are aspects that you can hold on to and apply to other forms of music and other things in your life. But that would actually be a really poor description of me because I'm really one of the most anti-nostalgia kind of people that you could meet. I don't like holding on to things just for the sake of holding on to them, especially labels and ideals and dogma.
ETHAN SMITH: They are my good friends. My favorite period was up until Mike left the first time. I thought after that it got business orientated and you know..they were making a job out of it-that is not meant to sound insulting because they were really fucking great but you know-I liked basically everything when Mike was singing-that was my favorite stuff, and then there are little things here and there. They kind of reverted back to the Black Sabbath type of influence mixed with southern rock. They are pretty good but I liked the original lineups and stuff. I like to see them but you know they aren’t the same deal as they were before. They aren’t the same band and they aren’t doing the same things. It’s funny, because with Woody its like he just wants to play guitar, you know? And he is one of the cooler people I have met. Mike you know..he is trying to play bass in the same situation, trying to be in a good band, and now they are busted. It’s broken. Reed doesn’t play with them anymore or they don’t get along too well anymore and that is a really shitty thing because they are all cool people.
This site is copyright Paul Czarnowski, but this article is copyright Brian Walsby or something. All guitar tabs n such are property of Corrosion Of Conformity, for educational purposes, and open to interpretation or some such stuff. Don't sue, I love this band.