CORROSION OF CONFORMITY's MIKE DEAN Talks About Forthcoming Album

On August 9, Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal of Metal Assault conducted an interview with vocalist/bassist Mike Dean of the reunited "Animosity"-era lineup of CORROSION OF CONFORMITY. An excerpt from the chat folows below.

Metal Assault: A new C.O.C. album is supposed to be in the works. A lot of people must be wondering what's happening with that.

Mike: We actually have five new songs put together enough to perform now and the rest of it is kind of a work in progress. But creatively speaking, I think we're in a process where we're cranking out the music in a natural way and it's coming together. So I think in another couple of months we should be ready to record in earnest. I'm not sure if we're going to keep recording ourselves up there at the farm or we'll go to a fancier facility. I think we have our current take on our classic style in mind. We're definitely expanding on our past identity but we kind of have some new stuff to offer. So I'm excited about it. I want it to come together quickly without over-thinking it.

Metal Assault: So can we expect more tour dates once the album is recorded and you hit the road proper to promote it?

Mike: Yeah, that's the plan, to do that and also do a full-length RIGHTEOUS FOOL recording [featuring Dean and C.O.C. drummer Reed Mullin] and keep touring together. Also there is some talk of doing some shows with Pepper [Keenan, C.O.C. guitarist/vocalist and a member of DOWN] in the "Deliverance" lineup format. That's sort of how this whole thing started. We had some invitations to play High Voltage festival and perhaps do some dates in U.K. and Europe, and then it turned out Pepper was busy with DOWN. So we found out we couldn't do that but the fire had kind of been lit under us and we wanted to go out and play. There were some good opportunities. I made the suggestion in just, kind of jokingly, saying that I wish we could play some three-piece shows. Nobody laughed and everybody was really quiet (laughs).

Metal Assault: I read that you were open to the idea of even recording an album with Pepper. How much truth there is to that?

Mike: Well, the truth in that is we want to do a three-piece full-length recording and we're going to do it. But I think our next move after supporting that a little bit, will be to look toward changing it up again and depending on the schedule of DOWN and Pepper, doing something with him because I think people would be excited to hear that. I thought that "In The Arms Of God", the last recording that we did with him, was really amazing. I thought he had some good ideas and really enjoyed doing it. We didn't tour enough on it, partially because of DOWN's schedule and partially because our record company was in the process of going under, also the Hurricane Katrina striking at that time. It was bad for Pepper as he had to cancel some dates to get back to normal and all that. So we came out with a really good release but never got a chance to support it. Just the idea of expanding on what we were doing in "In The Arms Of God" and then bringing Reed back in to play drums, for me that would be really exciting.

Read the entire interview from Metal Assault.