Last night Corrosion of Conformity delivered 7 heavy, mighty, and thunderous classics to a predominantly black-dressed audience at The Paramount in Huntington, NY. During the set, frontman Pepper Keenan told the crowd that the new 2017 C.O.C. album will release in November. This will be the band’s first album with Keenan since 2005’s In The Arms of God. 

C.O.C. is a great live band. Keenan’s voice and signature growl gave the band’s live sound a fullness that is unmatched. The performance of “Broken Man” exemplified this as the raw lead vocals filled out the venue. The voice is the ideal compliment to distorted rock guitars. Overall, it sounded like the band was playing with a lot more than the four members on stage.

Guitarist Woody Weatherman and Keenan both employed their Gibson SGs just like when I saw them at Madison Square Garden in 1997. I can’t believe that was 20 years ago! That means that the Wiseblood album is old enough to drink this year (on or after October 12, that is).

Speaking of Wiseblood, the band couldn’t fit songs like “King of the Rotten,” “Drowning in a Daydream,” and “Fuel” into the set because they are supporting Danzig on a mini-tour. Much of the songs played last night were off Deliverance, such as “Seven Days,” “Albatross,” and the band’s most popular closing tune “Clean My Wounds.” They also played “Who’s Got The Fire” from America’s Volume Dealer and “Vote with a Bullet” from Blind, which got the Monday night crowd fired up.

The set began with bassist Mike Dean and drummer Reed Mullin jamming on the intro to “Paranoid Opioid” from In the Arms of God. It’s amazing to see Mullin behind the kit again. Looks like he is doing well. His drumming was super tight and majorly badass.

At the end of the set, the crowd showed C.O.C. metal love as they concluded with band fist bumps while walking off stage.

When I was in high school 23 years ago, I listened to their CDs on repeat. C.O.C. puts out great albums, start to finish. I am thrilled that I still get to see them live with the same mid-90’s lineup. The new album in November is going to be killer. We have been waiting a long time for this. Looking forward to a future headlining tour.

Image above from C.O.C.’s December 4, 2015 show at GramercyTheatre in NYC.