Released: January 12, 2018
Pepper Keenan’s first studio album with Corrosion of Conformity since 2005 opens by making him wait. “Novus Deus” spends nearly a minute and a half in a dirty instrumental crawl before “The Luddite” brings in his worn drawl. That raises the album’s central question: why does a record built around Keenan’s return keep stepping away from his voice and the full-band charge?
Released in 2018, No Cross No Crown also reunited Keenan, Woody Weatherman, Mike Dean, and Reed Mullin on record for the first time since 2000’s America’s Volume Dealer. Their shared history is obvious in the low-slung riffs and Southern-rock bends, but the sequencing tells more of the story. “No Cross,” “Matre’s Diem” and “Sacred Isolation” split the longer songs with short instrumental passages. The title track takes a longer detour through clean guitar, shadowy textures, and near-spoken vocals. Longtime producer John Custer mixed those four pieces, while Mike Fraser mixed the other eleven. Even the credits reflect the difference between the full songs and the quieter mood pieces.
Those short breaks change how the band is heard when it plugs back in. “Matre’s Diem” uses airy acoustic picking to pull the grit out of the room. “Forgive Me” then enters with guitars that sound broader and rougher because the ear has been reset. The melancholy piano and stray lead lines of “Sacred Isolation” sit between the six-minute drag of “Nothing Left to Say” and the heavy blues gait of “Old Disaster.” These breaks divide the record into chapters without forcing a grand concept onto it.
The main songs also depend on movement inside the riffs. “The Luddite” rides a blunt, descending figure, but Mullin refuses to make it march. His snare and cymbals maintain a loose swing around the guitars. “Cast the First Stone” trims the phrases into quicker bursts and brings paired guitar lines into the chorus. On “Wolf Named Crow,” the band stacks several guitar figures around a patient groove, leaving Keenan room to stretch words behind the beat. His voice has more dust than it did on Deliverance, and the arrangements use that grain. He bends lines, lets them crack, and trails off, giving the melodies a lived-in edge.
“Nothing Left to Say” makes especially good use of him. Clean guitar and a restrained vocal hold the opening together, then the distortion drops in as slow blocks without sending the tempo upward. The song grows angrier by getting denser. Dean’s bass thickens the spaces beneath the chord changes, while Mullin keeps small movements going inside the slow pace. The same approach drives “A Quest to Believe (A Call to the Void).” Its doom riff barely hurries, yet Mullin’s fills and Weatherman’s minor-key leads keep the six-minute song from settling into one grey shape.
Weatherman’s guitar is the other voice the album keeps bringing forward. “E.L.M.” joins thick chord punches to harmonized leads with a clear Thin Lizzy flavour, then drops back into the groove before the melody becomes decoration. The Queen cover “Son and Daughter” ends the record with a stomping beat, overloaded guitars, and Keenan dragging Brian May’s lines into COC’s own dirt. The original’s early-Queen stomp comes out coated in slower Southern grime.
So why keep clearing space around Keenan on the album announcing his return? Because No Cross No Crown shows how this four-man lineup works. The instrumental pauses, Mullin’s swing, Dean’s movement, and Weatherman’s leads determine what each vocal entrance means. When Keenan comes back in, the album lets you hear the whole Corrosion of Conformity around him.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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