By Kelley Simms
IX LIVES
Corrosion Of Conformity, Mike Dean (Center)
R
aleigh's sludgy, metallic, hardcore,
crossover/thrash-meisters,
Corrosion of Conformity have
endured many obstacles while forging a
30-plus year career. The trio, consisting of
guitarist Woody Weatherman, drummer
Reed Mullin and bassist/vocalist Mike
Dean, has experienced several member
changes, a couple of hiatuses and various
musical landscape shifts throughout its
existence. The band's 1991 release, Blind,
put COC on the map by treading on a
more commercial path compared to their
original hardcore origins they displayed
on their previous two albums. Videos
such as "Dance of the Dead" and "Vote
With a Bullet" garnered repeated plays on
MTV and made COC more accessible to
the mainstream. On its ninth album, aptly
titled IX, the band does a great job of
incorporating elements of its early to midperiod sound all the way up till 2012's
self-titled comeback album featuring all
three original members as a trio again.
Mike Dean fills us in on all things COC.
Mosh: COC's fan base is divided into two
camps: fans of your early punk/hardcore
days and fans of the more accessible
Blind-era and beyond days. Are you
aware of this division?
Mike Dean: I think it used to be that simplistic, but now it's even more complex.
There were a certain amount of people
that definitely were on board with the
Blind album. We incorporated all these
musical elements that was really ambitious. Most of the original hardcore people moved on from that and there are
younger kids who are into the theoretical
idea, they like the older hardcore type of
stuff and they want to hear Animosity and
stuff like that. Then there's people who
like Deliverance or Wiseblood. There's a lot
of people that really want to hear stuff
that they saw on MTV, like "Vote with a
Bullet" from Blind. Then there are people
who sort of got into the newer stuff.
There's various co