Last September, we reported that Corrosion of Conformity were planning to reunite with its onetime guitarist and vocalist Pepper Keenan next year for a new album and tour. Asked in a recent interview about the reunion, and whether they have started writing new material, drummer Reed Mullin replied:
“Pepper and I were talking the other day, and we’ve got some riffs left over from that era that I never used for COC stuff, and he didn’t use for Down. They’ve just been sitting around from when we used to do demos at Jag Studios. He was like, “Man, I found a couple cassettes. Remember those cassettes we used to do with [John] Custer down at Jag?” So yeah, he found a cache of some good riffage in his house down there in New Orleans that I guess he had packed away.
And for some reason, I can remember a lot of the riffs those guys write. Like, there’s a song on the new COC album, the three-piece, and the music is music Pepper and I had jammed back in 1989, and I ended up just putting lyrics to it. Me, Woody and Mike recorded it. It’s called ‘Tarquinius Superbus,” after the last Roman king. For some reason, I remember a lot of the stuff they do, so I’m kind of like an encyclopedia of a lot of their riffs.”
Keenan, who was a member of the band from 1989 to their hiatus in 2006, last recorded with Corrosion of Conformity on their 2005 album In the Arms of God. The band has since recorded two albums without Keenan (2012’s Corrosion of Conformity and this year’s IX), which featured the Animosity-era lineup of Woody Weatherman (guitars), Mike Dean (bass, vocals) and Reed Mullin (drums).