{"id":804094,"date":"2020-02-12T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T15:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=950998"},"modified":"2020-02-12T08:00:42","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T15:00:42","slug":"hear-corrosion-of-conformity-drummers-previously-unreleased-song-with-righteous-fool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/hear-corrosion-of-conformity-drummers-previously-unreleased-song-with-righteous-fool\/","title":{"rendered":"Hear Corrosion of Conformity Drummer\u2019s Previously Unreleased Song With Righteous Fool"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2009, Corrosion of Conformity<\/a> were on a break. The North Carolina underground legends \u2014 who had played everything from frenetic hardcore to groovy Southern rock since forming 1982 \u2014 had last put out an album in 2004, and bassist Mike Dean had fallen out of touch with co-founding drummer Reed Mullin, who\u2019d exited in 2000.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo I hadn\u2019t laid eyes on the dude in nine years and he rolled up in my driveway with a complete stranger,\u201d Dean tells Rolling Stone,<\/em> \u201cand asks me if I want to learn some songs and start a band.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The total stranger was guitarist Jason Browning, and the band turned out to be Righteous Fool, a swinging, soulful hard-rock trio<\/a> featuring vocals by all three members that played live and put out a lone seven-inch in 2010. The group eventually fizzled, in part due to an eventual Corrosion of Conformity reunion that included both Dean and Mullin, but not before Righteous Fool recorded an album\u2019s worth of songs at Dave Grohl\u2019s Studio 606, piggybacking on the sessions that produced COC\u2019s self-titled 2012 reunion LP. Now, following Mullin\u2019s death last month, Dean and Browning are sharing \u201cLow Blow,\u201d a track from those session, on what would have been the drummer\u2019s 54th birthday.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Although best known as a drummer, Mullin was also an accomplished vocalist and lyricist \u2014 contributing about half the vocals to Corrosion of Conformity\u2019s 1985 punk-metal landmark Animosity<\/em> \u2014 and the drummer sings lead here. He belts out his words in a gritty yet melodic wail that perfectly complements the song\u2019s mean, bluesy swagger. Although the music comes from Studio 606, the Mullin vocal that appears here comes from a demo the drummer had made, which he felt he couldn\u2019t top.<\/p>\n

The song\u2019s lyrics seem to take aim at greed and corruption, as Mullin sings lines like \u201cLow blow\/Who stole the show\/And all the money,\u201d \u201cFollow the glow, carrion crow\/You picked it bone dry\/You ate the heart but you left the eyes,\u201d and \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t buy what you\u2019re selling\/A channel for your disease\/You know it\u2019s just a con job\/But they will believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dean says that for Mullin, coming into his own as a singer had been a gradual process.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs COC developed more melodic sense, he did as well, and he would offer up a lot of vocal melodies, harmonies and lyrics. These were not always what everyone else was looking for and you could see some frustration and, eventually, he quit COC to be the principal songwriter-singer guy,\u201d Dean explains. \u201cEventually while doing Corrosion of Conformity<\/em> at Dave Grohl\u2019s place, he sang a song called \u2018Weaving Spiders\u2019<\/a> where he really started to find himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Dean, \u201cLow Blow\u201d stands as a testament to his late friend\u2019s expanding creative horizons. He doesn\u2019t expect the full Righteous Fool session to come out \u2014 \u201cBasically, all of the songs are very good, but with three vocalists and a lot of influences, we just felt like we didn\u2019t have an album that was cohesive, from a band with an identity,\u201d Dean says \u2014 but he says now seemed like the right time to release this track. \u201cIn the last months of his life, [Reed] kept mentioning to Jason that he was particularly excited about our performance as a band and in his vocal performance in particular,\u201d Dean says of \u201cLow Blow.\u201d \u201cSo we thought we would share it for his birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mullin had appeared on Corrosion of Conformity\u2019s most recent album, 2018\u2019s No Cross No Crown,<\/em> but wasn\u2019t part of the band\u2019s live lineup at the time of his death. Just days after his passing, the band \u2014 including current drummer Jon Green \u2014 embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, which wraps up on February 12th. \u201cI\u2019m not going to lie and say it\u2019s been easy doing this Australia tour knowing Reed isn\u2019t coming back, but music gets us through life, so we go on,\u201d Dean explains.<\/p>\n

He also confirms that COC will forge ahead, both live and in the studio. \u201cWe are making plans to write and record with Jon Green,\u201d he says. \u201cHe once learned our set in 24 hours and killed it in front of 60,000 people at a festival with no fear. No one will ever be Reed, and it is futile to try to be him. So we chose someone who is uniquely themselves; we pick up the pieces and start a new chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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In 2009, Corrosion of Conformity were on a break. The North Carolina underground legends \u2014 who had played everything from frenetic hardcore to groovy Southern rock since forming 1982 \u2014 had last put out an album in 2004, and bassist Mike Dean had fallen out of touch with co-founding drummer Reed Mullin, who\u2019d exited in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 00:01:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}