WOODY WEATHERMAN On Having PEPPER KEENAN Back In CORROSION OF CONFORMITY: 'It's Kind Of Just Second Nature'

Jaime Regadas of Metal Nexus recently conducted an interview with CORROSION OF CONFORMITY guitarist Woody Weatherman. You can listen to the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the band's new "No Cross No Crown" studio album:

Woody: "We worked on this thing. I think getting back with [Pepper] Keenan [guitar, vocals] these couple of years… Pepper came back in, we did two solid years of touring, which is kind of unusual for not having a new record. But, we were like, 'We've got to stop accepting these tours and get back in the studio.' Thank goodness this thing is about ready to bounce. It's been a trip."

On the symbolism behind the "No Cross No Crown" album title:

Woody: "I think there's several meanings that people can take from it. For me, I think it's more [about] authority breathing down your neck kind of stuff. For other people, they may get a different meaning out of it. I think the themes change sometimes over the course of the album and hopefully there's a lot of stuff where different people get a different meaning."

On the lyrical themes found on "No Cross No Crown":

Woody: "It goes everywhere. If you are familiar with Keenan, he likes to dive into a lot of things, but nothing all that pointed. Nothing too direct. You don't want to… it's not meant to be a political kind of statement. Heck, let's face it: There's a lot of that out there. It's probably more geared towards what we can do to help people, help each other."

On having Keenan back in the band:

Woody: "Anytime you have another person into the mix it's like a new dynamic. We've all worked together for so many years. It's kind of just second nature. Once the riffs start flowing and the ideas start coming out, everything starts to happen. This particular record was really fun to make because we didn't have a lot of material at all before we started making the record. We were just doing these little four or five-day sessions and trying to have a song or two done from beginning to end. We would just record as we go along. It was definitely a different approach for CORROSION because we were spending so much time doing demos and all that stuff. It kind of is the demo, but we put a lot of time into it."

On C.O.C.'s musical progression since their 1982 formation:

Woody: "Oh, man, whenever we started out, we were kids. I still feel like a kid, but I mean, from day one, what I wanted to do was just play music, have fun doing it. Being able to travel is always a big part of it for me. I still enjoy that aspect of it. I think through the years, I never thought that we would still be around and was one of the things I was thinking about during the early years of the band, I wasn't thinking, 'Hey, man, in 35 years, I will still be releasing records.' It was not at the forefront in my mind, but I'm just so thankful to be able to do it and still have people interested. It's amazing. I feel like we worked hard for it, but we're always kind of lucky."

On whether C.O.C. still owes a debt to its punk music origins:

Woody: "Absolutely. That was a big part of our early days. That's also a big part of what allowed us to go on the road at such an early stage in the band's career. If you were in that sort of scene as a hardcore punk band, all that stuff, you sort of had a built-in audience, even if people didn't necessarily know the band, you could show up in Oklahoma City and wherever it was you were traveling and there would be people there simply because of the type of music it was. It was really awesome and very beneficial to the band. It's all a big learning experience. Learning how to be out on the road, traveling in a van, seeing all the crazy places that there were to see. I think it played a big part."

On whether "No Cross No Crown" is one of C.O.C.'s most "representative" albums:

Woody: "I would say so. That's definitely a fair statement. There's elements of pretty much all the eras of the band in it. There's heavier stuff, the more bluesier-type of elements, then there's some of the straightforward kind of rocking things. I think we wanted it to flow a little bit of all the things we love of all the different types of music. We kind of wanted to ball it up and throw it up in one room. It kind of came out that way. There's nothing that doesn't sound like C.O.C. on it, but yet it's a very direct record. There's a lot of different types of songs on it, which is cool."

"No Cross No Crown" was released on January 12 via Nuclear Blast Entertainment. The album is the group's first studio effort with Keenan in more than a decade.

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY recently completed a North American tour with BLACK LABEL SOCIETY. Additional support was provided by EYEHATEGOD and RED FANG on select shows.

Photo credit: Dean Karr