Corrosion of Conformity

One of the first bands to hybridize metal and punk music in blistering speed and underground aesthetics, COC helped launch a movement which had lasting influences in the metal community before collapsing into swamp-metal under the influence of more mainstream Louisiana bands.

Corrosion of Conformity - Eye for an Eye + Six Songs (1982)
Corrosion of Conformity - Animosity (1987)

Eye for an Eye + Six Songs

Caroline

1982

Production: Extremely garage and messy without missing the tone or caliber of volume.

Review: As one of the horizon expanders who brought us thrash music, Corrosion of Conformity fell heavily onto the punk side of song styling with riff sculpting taken from the book of doom bands such as Black Sabbath or Saint Vitus. Gratifyingly intense with its hardcore drive, this music with deliberate use of negative space in tempo creates a plane on which its structure can expand.

Tracklist:

1. Tell me
2. Minds are controlled
3. Indifferent
4. Broken will
5. Rabid Dogs
6. L.S.
7. Rednekkk
8. Coexist
9. Excluded
10. Dark thoughts
11. Poison planet
12. What?
13. Negative Outlook
14. Positive Outlook
15. No drunk
16. College town
17. Not safe
18. Eye for an Eye
19. Nothings gonna change
20. The Green Manalishi (with the Two-Pronged Crown)
21. Center of the world
22. Citizen
23. Not for me
24. What?
25. Negative outlook
Length: 42:50

corrosion of conformity an eye for an eye plus six songs with mike singing, a foundational thrash album

One- and two-riff songs dictate a clarity which is underscored with savage hardcore howls in vocals that presage death and black metal in their Motorhead-style rough-edged voice that gains an aura of overworked anguish as each song develops. Percussion, in an age before the blast beat, slides between rock or punk style patterns moved between a number of tempos ranging from the rash and tearing canter of extreme hardcore to lazy pulse languidity. Amazingly, compositional fragmentation deploys varied melodies which make it simple to distinguish these songs as collections of riffs over rhythm with fragmentary layers of vocals providing additional frenzy.

For the classic feeling of a well-executed riff, or an example of a thrash band that uses more chord forms than the major barre, Corrosion of Conformity distinguish themselves alongside Cryptic Slaughter and D.R.I. as integral fusion of metal and punk. What makes this album really gratifying however is the sense of fervent outreach and belief in life beyond these strife-ridden and urgent anthems of terror contra will.

1. Loss For Words
2. Mad World
3. Consumed
4. Holier
5. Positive Outlook
6. Prayer
7. Intervention
8. Kiss Of Death
9. Hungry Child
10. Animosity

Animosity (Caroline)
After an initial success with pure thrash, like many of the early Crossover bands C.O.C. drifted toward the more refined version of the style, with longer songs and more emphatic connections between subject matter and the handful of themes within each work. Here the raw riffcraft of the band can shine as can some of their songwriting skills, creating an album with many fundamental parts of the previous areas in which their music had been created, arranged with a new eye for division, order and coherence. These songs stop short of anthemic, and employ many of the abrupt techniques of hardcore music to emphasize the disintegrating logic overwhelming each piece of ordered sound. Violent wails accompany rough shouted vocals, and the churning of guitar nicely matches an open and pungent drum track, creating something often as vile as death metal but with the blank-faced innocence of a punk band. Crossover fans and anyone who looks toward experimental music for interest will find in this some moments and a whole of a unique language.