Welcome to Napalm Flesh! This week we have an interview with drummer Reed Mullin of the mighty Corrosion of Conformity, who will be in Salt Lake on June 15, headlining a show with tourmates Torche, Black Cobra and Gaza. We also have a rundown of this week’s metal happenings in Salt Lake and beyond.
Event Listings
compiled by Bryer Wharton
bryer@slugmag.com
Tonight, Thursday, May 31, check out Teeph (sludge/noise from CA) at Burt's (21+) with Yuktooth (also from CA) and locals Dethblo, Year of the Wolf and Blood Purge. $5 gets you in, music around 9 pm.
Friday, June 1 Century Media recording artists 7 Horns 7 Eyes (metalcore) from Seattle play Burt's (21+) with Stealing Axiom, Eyes of Damnation, Burn Your World and Incendiant. $7 gets you in, music starts around 8 pm.
Saturday, June 2, catch a big old mess of bands with the Winter Decompression Fest 3 at the Ogden Amphitheater. Bands playing are Opal Hill Drive, Autostigmatic, Sonic Prophecy, Ghostwone, Isaac Farr Trio, Heartbreak Hangover, Dub Symptom, Citizen Hypocrisy, Aerial and American Hitmen. Tickets are$10 and free for the kiddies under 12-years old are available. Music starts off at noon.
Monday June 4, Neurot Recording artists Across Tundras (doom/stoner/psych) play Burt's (21+) with the always rocking Lopan, Sure Sign of the Nail and Settle Down. $5 gets you in, music around 9 p.m.
Also Monday, nu-metal crew American Head Charge plays In the Venue (all ages) with Blue Felix, Blood of Saints, Vengeance and Orion's Wrath. $15.50 tickets are available, doors open at 6:30 pm.
Interview with Corrosion of Conformity drummer Reed Mullin
From the heady days of rudimentary punk rock through to the critical acclaim and airplay of Blind and Deliverance, Raleigh mutant institution Corrosion of Conformity is a truly kaleidoscopic band for all eras. Recently, the band revived the lineup present on their crossover thrash masterpiece Animosity and recorded a stellar new album, giving me the impetus I needed to chat with drummer, C.O.C mainstay and championship storyteller Reed Mullin about hardcore, SNL, Pushead artwork and, of course, Slayer.
SLUG: What's the band’s schedule like now? I know you've done some shows with Clutch, and played a few festivals.
Mullin: We're not on tour right this second. It's a little sporadic. As opposed to doing two or three months in one big block, we've been doing 'em here and there for two or three weeks. Right now we have this month blocked off so Mike [Dean, bass/vocals] and I can finish our side project, Righteous Fool and we recorded all the basic tracks at Dave Grohl's studio, 606. We're gonna finish that up, do some festivals, and hopefully hook up with Clutch again or something like that. We've got about three weeks worth of US shows coming up in June.
SLUG: Great! Let's talk about putting the "animosity" lineup together. I don't wanna write it off as a cheap nostalgia trip, so what were the main motivations to hook up with Woody [Weatherman, guitar/vocals] again?
Mullin: I've seen Woody since like 5th grade (laughs). Essentially, I left C.O.C for a little while, they did another album, and then kinda just stopped. I think Down was getting bigger, so Pepper [Keenan, guitar] was busy with that. It'd been like 3 or four years since those guys had done anything...then Pepper got a call out of the blue saying that lots of different promoters overseas wanted us to do a reunion thing, but it had to be the four of us. He was worried like 'do you think Reed will do it?' and I'm like 'hell yeah I'll do it, it'll be great!' but it ended up not working out. By that point, the three of us [Mike, Reed and Woody] had been jamming separately. We really learned how to play our instruments together, and I think by virtue of the fact that our baseplate was American hardcore and Black Sabbath, we becamse this weird creature...and we still are that subspecies (laughs). It was like instantaneous when the three of us started jamming together again. People had been bugging us for years to do some of that old hardcore stuff, because whenever we'd get a new singer, all the older material wouldn't be performed live. Anyway, I finally got Mike and Woody to capitulate and go with the idea, and I had a few people who were interested in having us do some shows, specifically playing the HC material. I mean, we don't even have to speak to each other when we play. We know when to stop, when to start. It's a cool experience that I've never had playing with anybody else. Mike decided not to just make it a nostalgia trip, but that we write some new stuff. In three weeks we had eleven songs.
SLUG: Three weeks? That's pretty fast for you guys.
Mullin: Yeah it is, but I think it demonstrates how well we work together. We wrote those songs, had some people interested in that hardcore stuff and the reaction was so positive we were like 'fuck man, let's keep going!' It wasn't too long after that when Dave Grohl, who had that side project Them Crooked Vultures, did that SNL "Crisis of Conformity" skit. I found out that band was playing Atlanta the next day, so I figured I'd go down and give him some shit because I hadn't seen Dave in a long time.
