Mike Dean (Corrosion of Conformity)- Interview
by D-ROCK
CMB: Thanks for taking time to talk to me today. How’re you doing?
MD: Doing a few interviews, and spreading the word.
CMB: Iʼve listened to the new album, and man, it rocks!
MD: Yeah, we thought it tuned out pretty good.
CMB: When you recorded, was it a typical approach to recording, or was there a lot of tracking done on the road?
MD: It was fairly typical. There was a lot of advanced preparation to make sure we had our thing together. We were better prepared than usual; we did a lot of demos beforehand to make sure that everything held up when we got to Studio 606. It was a fairly effortless studio process.
CMB: You’ve been touring since March, and are hitting Denver on June 16th?
MD: Yeah, itʼs gonna be a pretty complete tour of North America, and we are definitely swinging through the great state of Colorado!
CMB: We’re looking forward to your Denver show!
MD: Itʼs a great town. I love playing there.
CMB: Pepper is not involved with this record, is he?
MD: Not so much, but his influence is always felt. I feel like heʼs kinda like one of my models for, when youʼre writing songs, he demonstrated what type of preparation it takes to do that.
CMB: Itʼs cool that his influence and style is still heard in the band.
MD: Yeah, all the stylistic stuff we did as COC previously is pretty much a group occurrence. People sorta get the idea that somebody who sings is the figurehead, or whatever, and get a lot of mistaken ideas about where the material comes from, and all that. Even though Iʼm singing most the songs on the new album, itʼs pretty much a three-way split as far as input. Reed does sing three songs on this album, as well.
CMB: COC has been through quite a few line-up changes over the years, and this is the first time in over ten years the Animosity three-piece line-up (Woody Weatherman, Reed Mullen, Mike Dean) has toured together?
MD: Double that, and youʼll be there. Itʼs been a really long time, and that was kind of an interesting move to make. Pepperʼs schedule with Down was so intensive. We had talked about doing some shows with Pepper, and it sounded like a good thing to do, and we actually got Reed involved, because he didnʼt play on our last album; Stanton Moore of Galactic played drums on our last album, and heʼs an awesome drummer, but the one thing that was kinda missing was having our original drummer. We were excited to get Pepper and Reed back together to play some shows, but Down was working a little too much to make that happen (touring with Pepper) so thatʼs the point that we decided ‘Letʼs try it as a three piece.’
CMB: As far as the new material, howʼs the crowd’s reaction?
MD: Really good, right from the start! There are a lot of bands doing nostalgic stuff, so the conditions I did it under was that we had some new material, and add that to the set. The songs we included right away were “the Money Changers,” “Rat City,” and “Your Tomorrow,” and itʼs been a really good response, for sure. You never know with new stuff. People might get bored, or throw stuff at ya, butʼs been encouraging from the start, and really awesome, as of late.
CMB: Who writes for the band, lyrically?
MD: For this one, itʼs mostly myself. Reed came in with three songs, and two he came up with entirely by himself, and one was a collaboration, but, yeah, pretty much that does fall on me at this point.
CMB: When I was growing up, and being part of the metal scene, your iconic logo was everywhere. Who designed that?
MD: It was kind of a collaborative thing. There was an illustrator named Errol Engelbrecht, and heʼs become a renowned tattoo artist at this point. I described to him a skull with the fallout symbol, and he came up with it for a ridiculously small fee, and was subsequently upset (jokingly laughs) about the high visibility and potential return on the design.
CMB: Back to your tour, who is going out with you?
MD: A band called Torch and a Raleigh, NC band called Valiant Thor who are just awesome musicians, with an awesome tongue in cheek identity. Our opener is Storm of Light. It should be a strong bill with every act being different enough to sit through without a crowd getting bored.
CMB: How long are you playing each night?
MD: About an hour and ten minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the gibberish.
CMB: You guys donʼt mess around on stage. You get right down to business, with very little banter.
MD: Yeah, Iʼm always like ‘Cʼmon, cʼmon, cʼmon!’ I just want to play.
CMB: Congrats on the new album, and speaking for the metal community here in Denver, we canʼt wait to see you in June!
Category: What's Up?
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