CORROSION OF CONFORMITY Will Focus On Next Studio Album After Completing Fall 2022 U.S. Tour

In a new interview with Greg Prato of Guitar World, CORROSION OF CONFORMITY guitarist/vocalist Pepper Keenan was asked if there are any plans for him and his bandmates to work on the follow-up to 2018's "No Cross No Crown" album. He responded: "Yes. We're doing this next [U.S.] tour [in November], and then we're going to start putting the pieces together and get our heads in 'studio land', and just focus on that."

As for whether the next CORROSION OF CONFORMITY LP will be released in 2023, Pepper said: "Maybe. We take our time doing these things. The Covid thing put everything in a kibosh and we lost a lot of time and energy.

"The way C.O.C. does it, if it ain't right, it's wrong," he explained. "We put our energy into it and try to create something that is up to our standards and try to push things as hard as we can in our world."

Keenan went on to say that he still loves "No Cross No Crown". "It was a really fun experience to do and the last thing we did with Reed [Mullin, CORROSION OF CONFORMITY's late drummer], unfortunately. So, it holds a special place in my heart. We're very happy with it."

Mullin died in January 2020 at the age of 53. The drummer, who co-founded CORROSION OF CONFORMITY in 1982 as a hardcore punk act alongside guitarist Woody Weatherman and bassist Mike Dean, had missed a number of shows in the preceding four years due to a variety of health issues, including an alcohol-related seizure he suffered back in June 2016.

Asked how Reed's passing affected him and the rest of CORROSION OF CONFORMITY, Pepper told Guitar World: "We lost our left arm. It was very hard to find a drummer. We have John Green, who is fantastic, but you just can't replace people like that. Other people have gone through it, too — but it's not easy. You spend decades with a person writing, and you don't even have to look at them; it just comes out. This was the first time we had to regroup in a long time and try to do it with a different drummer. We've got that figured out, so now we're getting ready to focus on that."

In 2014, after nearly a straight decade traversing the globe as a guitarist with New Orleans supergroup DOWN, Pepper reconnected with the core CORROSION OF CONFORMITY trio of Weatherman, Dean and Mullin to hit the road hard. "Reed called me and mentioned maybe playing a couple shows," Keenan recalled back in 2017. "I said, 'Let's just go to Europe and see if it works.' So we went to Europe and then ended up going back four times in one year... We toured for a year and then started tracking."

Recording in North Carolina with longtime producer John Custer, CORROSION OF CONFORMITY cut "No Cross No Crown" in about forty days over the course of a year. "We took our time and didn't put any pressure on ourselves," Keenan said. "I'd go up from New Orleans and we'd do four or five days at a time, just hacking away at it. It was fun because we did it like a demo, but in a studio. We were writing and putting it on tape at the same time. We took what parts we thought were great from the old days and weren't scared to go backwards. It kinda wrote itself that way."

The album's title came from a tour stop in England. "We were playing this old church from like the 1500s that had been turned into a performing arts center," Keenan recalled. "The dressing room had stained glass windows and one of them showed this poor fella being persecuted. Underneath it said, 'no cross no crown.' So I just took that idea. We're not trying to be on a soapbox, but we used it as a catalyst to write songs around."