CORROSION OF CONFORMITY - 'No Cross No Crown' (2018)

The year is 1975. Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath, are gathered together for recording sessions in a garage somewhere in the country. They share a joint and start jamming. After whole day of sessions the dream was over, Pepper Keenan woke up, opened up a beer and called Mike, Woody and Reed and told them: “Guys, it’s already 3 years since we got back together, let’s record an album, ah?“. They sat together, rolled a spliff, poured a bourbon and played ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Wiseblood’ for inspiration. And this is how ‘No Cross No Crown’ was born. Or at least I love imagine it being so, while listening the record for fuckteenth time since last week.

In 2001, after CORROSION OF CONFORMITY have released the killer ‘America’s Volume Dealer’, the drummer Reed Mullin left for 9 whole years. During this time the band released another great album – ‘In the Arms of God’. After this it was time for Pepper Keenan to call it quits in order to devote himself to DOWN and the next two records ‘Corrosion of Conformity’ (2012) and ‘IX’ (2014) are released by CORROSION OF CONFORMITY as a trio, before the return of Pepper in 2014. Logically, after almost 3 years of touring, the band decided it was but a time to record a new album – the first in this classic line up since 2000.

The four enter a studio in North Carolina, they call the producer Joh Custer with whom they work for so many years that he could calibrate even their gases and after 40 days they come out with a CD (vinyl, cassette, digital whatever), containing 15 tracks in 57 minutes. And the music is just what you’d expect to hear – the spirit of the 90’s CORROSION OF CONFORMITY albums, again soaked with the audio equivalent of dry bourbon and tobacco smoke at the summer sun. And tasty portions of Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath influence, peeking behind the well-known CORROSION OF CONFORMITY groove. But they have always been there, haven’t they?

‘No Cross No Crown’ is filled with great songs. ‘The Luddite’ and ‘E.L.M.’ are just killer southern metal; we have badass heavy boogie in ‘Wolf Named Crow’ and ‘Little Man’; we hear slow and heavy epic in ‘Nothing Left to Say’ and ‘A Quest to Believe (A Call to the Void)’, and at the end there stays a brutal cover of ‘Son and Daughter’ from the first album of QUEEN (1973), but with such riffing as if Brian May has gone to make tea while Tony Iommi plugged in for a song.

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY are together for 35 years. They have stripped the core of the band to trio just to build up to quartet again; at one point one of them leaving the band and at other – another one, just to play somewhere else, that they can easily do whatever the fuck they want to. And today it is obvious that they want to play in the line-up in which we fell in love 25 years ago. And tomorrow? I hope there are more tours and albums ahead.

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY – ‘No Cross No Crown’ (2018)