Crossover kings, Southern-fried sludge merchants, groove-metal godfathers – Corrosion of Conformity have been called all of it and more across four decades of doing things entirely on their own terms. Good God / Baad Man is not so much a return as it is a reckoning.
There are certainties in life: birth, death, and that signature COC sound. Throw on Blind, Deliverance, Wiseblood, or In the Arms of God – I could run through their entire catalogue and it’s there instantly, in droves. It makes no effort to hide itself, and why should it? It is literally the lifeblood of the band and so too its architect – not some glass-fronted marketing committee, but the one and only Pepper Keenan, who, like a much-beloved force of nature, has become one of the most quietly influential figures in heavy music ever.
Good God / Baad Man is an extraordinary arrival under extraordinary circumstances. Since No Cross No Crown in 2018, the COC universe has been shaken to its foundations. Founding drummer Reed Mullin passed away in January 2020, a loss whose gravity cannot be overstated, and bassist Mike Dean subsequently went his own way. That left Pepper Keenan and guitarist Woody Weatherman to contemplate what came next. What came next, as it turns out, was a double album – fourteen tracks split into two distinct but unified halves, with Stanton Moore stepping behind the kit and Bobby Landgraf, a veteran of Down and Honky, locking in on bass.
The concept itself tells you where you are immediately. Good God is the heavy, pissed-off half – the punk kids, the thrash instincts, and the bristling energy of a band that has never entirely lost its hardcore roots. Baad Man is the other side of the coin: looser, swaggering, and steeped in that Southern rock sprawl that has made COC such a singular proposition since Deliverance. Keenan described it as a love letter to rock and roll, and that is precisely what it feels like. The whole thing was produced by Warren Riker, who captures the band with a warmth and physicality that a lot of modern heavy albums sorely lack. You can hear the room. You can hear the band breathing.
The album opens with “Good God? / Final Dawn” and it is an absolute statement of purpose. There is no preamble, no fanfare – just that enormous Weatherman riff uncoiling like something waking up after a very long, very angry sleep. The track has a real sense of dual identity built right into its title – furious at the front end and then that remarkable turn in the latter half that earns the “Final Dawn” tag completely.
“You Or Me” is the first real head-turning moment of the record and the kind of track that sits somewhere between Black Flag aggression and Sabbath-grade doom without ever sounding confused about what it is. There’s a ferocious urgency here, a mid-tempo snarl that absolutely refuses to let you go. It is an earworm of the most satisfying variety — the kind that burrows in and refuses to leave, and you find yourself wondering why you would want it to.
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“Gimme Some Moore” was the album’s first single, and the band’s own account of it is revealing – Keenan and Weatherman wrote this as if they were seventeen years old again, and it shows in the most exhilarating way possible. The addition of Ministry’s Al Jourgensen on backing vocals is inspired: two genuinely singular voices from two genuinely singular outfits colliding on a track that is all fury and forward momentum. It’s also a tribute in all but name to the late Reed Mullin, whose spirit is all over this album but never more palpably than here. It is not only full of intent, but an absolute plethora of the hardcore tones that built this band from the ground up.
“The Handler” is the first moment on the album where a new track sounds unmistakably like something from the mid-nineties peak of the Deliverance era, which personally has me in raptures. The lyrical content feels like an incredibly personal meditation on power and control; the tones and riff structure really stand out as the band stretches out into that looser, blues-infused space that has always been one of their most powerful registers. There is a looseness to the arrangement that feels entirely deliberate and entirely right.
“Bedouin’s Hand” is a droning, reverb-soaked instrumental that carries an almost Eastern quality to it, functioning as the album’s first real moment of atmospheric breath. It does not outstay its welcome, and it earns its place completely by setting up what follows with real purpose – this is a band who understand the architecture of an album.
“Run For Your Life” is hands down the crowning glory of the Good God half — the track that “Bedouin’s Hand” has been building towards – and for me, this is quintessential COC at their most epic and most purposeful. The intro riff sits somewhere between Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and Black Sabbath’s “Wheels of Confusion”, and then it detonates into something entirely its own. If you want to hand somebody a single track that explains why this band matters, this is a very strong candidate. The guitar work from Weatherman is absolutely extraordinary – it feels personal and purposeful in equal measure.
If the Good God half is the band with its fists up, the “Baad Man” title track announces the flip side with a swagger that is something else entirely. There is a deep and unforced Billy Gibbons cool running through every bar of this thing – loose, hip-shaking, and unhurried – the kind of thing you either have or you do not. It cannot be manufactured, and it cannot be learned. This is Keenan and Weatherman in their element, playing what they grew up loving and doing it with the complete command of two people who have spent four decades getting to exactly this point.
“Lose Yourself” fades in with a brief but effective soundscape intro before the main riff kicks in with more edge than the surrounding tracks on this half of the record suggest. It is immediately clear that Baad Man is not merely a Southern rock playlist; there are Blind-era undercurrents running through this, an intensity that keeps the whole thing honest. Stanton Moore is absolutely locked in here, and the interplay between the rhythm section and the guitars is something to behold. This is a band who have nothing left to prove and are consequently free to be extraordinary.
“Mandra Sonos” is the second of the album’s instrumental interludes – a lute solo that is as unexpected as it sounds and considerably more effective. It carries the DNA of Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore” filtered through Pepper Keenan’s particular sensibility and sets up what follows with an almost cinematic quality. The more you listen to this album, the more you get from it, and “Mandra Sonos” is one of those tracks that rewards patience completely.
“Asleep On The Killing Floor” takes the mantle and leads into the latter part of the album with an unapologetic ferocity that makes clear Baad Man has not gone entirely honky-tonk on you. This album at times feels like being pulled through a time machine of the band’s entire discography, and “Asleep On The Killing Floor” is one of the purest expressions of that quality – the convergence of the band’s punk fury and its Southern instincts into a single supremely confident statement.
“Handcuff County” plants its flag squarely in Southern strut territory – all rolling grooves, greasy guitar licks, and that unmistakable Texas boogie swagger, set up by an intro of ambient road noise that puts you right there on the blacktop before the riff even arrives. If MTV or Headbangers Ball were still around, this would be on heavy rotation – there is an immediacy to the hook that is almost radio-friendly without any of the compromises that phrase usually implies. COC manage the rare trick of being accessible without ever being diluted.
“Swallowing The Anchor” is laden with experience and proficient musicianship in equal measure. I wrote about that COC sound, and here it is in abundance – there is certainly a formula at work, but it is far from stagnated; it manages to keep its fire and its freshness at the same time. Bobby Landgraf’s bass work is exceptional throughout this record, but here, particularly, he lays down a foundation that gives Keenan and Weatherman the room to really stretch out.
“Brickman” has a real sneer to it – a track that feels like it was written by people who have watched the music industry eat itself alive and have the luxury of finding it mildly amusing from a comfortable distance. The tempo shifts are masterful, and the solo section is the kind of thing that makes you involuntarily air guitar in a very public place. If the songwriting and structure here were a restaurant, I would be throwing Michelin stars at it.
When the closer fires through, there is a real heart-tug of emotion, and when “Forever Amplified” arrives, it announces itself as the epic finale the whole double album has been building towards. It is uncharacteristic of Baad Man’s typical Southern swagger – feedback-soaked, sludge-inflected, a Deliverance-era heaviness that hits you square. New Orleans jazz vocalist Anjelika Joseph of Stanton Moore’s Galactic wails over the track in a manner that is genuinely extraordinary, and the result is something COC have never quite sounded like before, whilst sounding more like COC than ever.
The double album format suits them completely. Good God and Baad Man are genuinely distinct listening experiences that together present the full spectrum of what this band has always been — the punk fury, the sludge metal weight, the Southern groove, the blues instinct, and the sheer bloody-mindedness that has kept them going since 1982. For a lot of fans, this album will be a deeply satisfying confirmation of everything they already knew about COC. But it will also serve as a gateway for a newer generation who stumble across it and find themselves wondering why nobody told them about this band sooner. If so, start with “Gimme Some Moore”. Work backwards. Come back to this. You will.
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Good God / Baad Man is out on April 3rd
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