Corrosion Of Conformity: Reeeaal Baad Men

For the best part of four decades, CORROSION OF CONFORMITY have been churning out some of the finest riffs ever committed to tape. Formed in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1982, since then there have been various iterations of COC, evolving from the snot-nosed hardcore kids who wrote the debut Eye For An Eye, to the purveyors of low and slow southern-tinged metal of classic albums like Deliverance and In The Arms of God. The band, led by long-term members and chief songwriters Pepper Keenan and Woody Weatherman, are now getting ready to release their first album since 2018’s No Cross No Crown, a double album entitled Good God / Baad Man. 

Distorted Sound caught up with Pepper for a slightly chaotic zoom call while – in true chaotic rock’n’roll fashion – he was hightailing it down the highway between his home in Mississippi to his studio in New Orleans. “I’m building a new pedal board,” he laughs while straightening up his phone which is balanced on the dashboard, “so I had to go and grab a bunch of stuff.”

The pedalboard build is in prep for an upcoming tour of the US and Europe tour promoting Good God / Baad Man. Very much an exploration of two sides of the band, the first half is a spiritual journey explored through the medium of psychedelic tinged stoner metal, and lyrics that deal with religion, existentialism and emotion while the second is much more visceral, fun and at times down-right funky, with themes of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. 

Pepper explains how the decision to make a double album came about, “Me and Woody had known early on that CORROSION OF CONFORMITY has the luxury by design, of being able to go multiple directions because we’ve always kind of set ourselves up that way. This record in particular, we’ve gone more extreme in both directions. We got to thinking that it would be wonderful if we could set this up as two separate entities to give ourselves more freedom, to not have to be constricted to one particular sound. At first, the label thought we were crazy, until we started sending them songs.

The two-sides-of-the-same coin nature of the album was apparently conceived early on in the songwriting process. “We had the concept of doing this before we even had all the songs written,” explains Pepper. “We had the order of the songs in order that we wanted, before they were even all finished. It was a weird way to approach things, but it felt right at the time in the way we were doing it. The creative process is the really wonderful, fun part of it so we took advantage of that and we spent almost two years doing this thing.”

The result is a journey of highs and lows, tension and release, which is supposed to be consumed in one sitting if you have the time to do so. Although, as Pepper recently found out, the two sides of the record work either way round. “The funny thing is, the other day I put on Baad Man first and Good God second. And it was crazy. It’s a whole different world.”

The intervening years between No Cross No Crown and the new album were a tumultuous time within the CORROSION OF CONFORMITY camp. In January 2020, original drummer Reed Mullin tragically passed away having struggled with alcohol addiction for many years. Then in 2024, bassist Mike Dean announced he was leaving the band in order to focus on studio work. Pepper reflects, “I supported him on that. If he’s done his time, he’s done his time. We wouldn’t be here without him, but Woody and I didn’t feel that way, and the way Woody and I structured this thing, I wanted to do something that Reed would be proud of.”

For a band in its fourth decade, there is a youthful exuberance to Good God / Baad Man that fizzes from the speakers on every listen. It seems that despite the tragedy, there is a new lease of life within the COC camp. “The whole recording process is probably the most positive, fun, weird recording thing we’ve ever done,” exudes Pepper. “Man, everything lined up. The feedback gods were smiling. Everything was going right and we were stoked. There was some degree of pleasure. You know, sometimes it gets to be a pain ass. You’re in the studio. You burn out. Your hair is falling out, you’re not sleeping, you’re trying to force something. But we were laughing the whole time. We were drinking beer, smashing beer cans, just ripping, doing it the way we did when we were 19 years old, playing guitar until our hands fell off. And I don’t think I’d ever do a record different.”

One of the major factors of the recording process being so enjoyable was surely down to its setting. After all, Good God / Baad Man was committed to tape home studio of none other than Barry Gibb. Yes, that Barry Gibb, one third of THE BEE GEES. The studio itself is part of the mansion that Eric Clapton convinced Gibb to buy in the 1970s. As Pepper describes it, it’s less a house and more of a limestone castle set in the Miami hillside. “The swimming pool is bigger than my whole house!” He laughs. 

As Pepper already alluded to, the stars seemed to align at every step of the way, and being the only metal band ever to record at Barry Gibb’s house. “That was a weird thing about making this record. After all the shit we’ve been through with Reed and Mike Dean, me and Woody just had a super positive attitude. And then if anybody, I don’t care who they were, heard that COC was having a hard time or struggling, there were people there to lend a hand. We had a lot of engineers offering to help who just wanted to see us continue. If we needed a piece of gear, they were like ‘take it’. It was super cool.”

One of the people who were first to lend a hand was MINISTRY‘s Al Jourgensen, who provided backing vocals on the track Real Bad Man, as well as giving a cameo appearance on the track’s video. “Yeah, he’s one of my favourite people on Earth,” Pepper says fondly of Jourgensen. “We toured with MINISTRY and we couldn’t believe we’d never met before, but we hit it off immediately. He’s one of my favourite people on Earth. It turns out we’re both as fucking sinister as we thought we were. So it was very fun hanging out with him. I sang a song on his last record and then I called him back to do one on ours.” 

Unfortunately, the video got hit with a ‘non-compliant’ notice from YouTube due to its graphic depiction of beer drinking, gambling and general rock-n-roll debauchery. Pepper just laughs at the situation, “I mean, the name of the band is CORROSION OF CONFORMITY. We’re not supposed to be compliant! Not that we did that video, wanting to not be compliant but I thought it was like all things the rock and roll in one that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

On the most part, and in keeping with the album’s themes, he’s approaching things with positivity, and while there is still plenty to be pissed off about, he’s doing what metal musicians do best and channelling that anger into something good as a form of catharsis. 

“I really think that’s important, especially the way things are right now.” he says. “The record starts out kind of epic, and then it gets really furious and angry. But I think with the record’s over, you feel kind of cathartic or better than when you started. There’s definitely pissed moments, but you got to get it out.”

It would of course be remiss while talking to Pepper Keenan not to ask about his other project, DOWN who have also been busy writing a new album. “It’s in the can,” he says candidly. And, in perhaps another instance of the stars serendipitously aligning for him, he points out that the last time he put out two albums from both bands in the same year was with the respective bands linchpin albums Deliverance and NOLA came out in 1994. “They both ended up being massive albums. It’s funny how time works out.”

Good God / Baad Man is out now via Nuclear Blast. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS129 here.

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