52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #21

Corrosion of Conformity – In The Arms of God

(Sanctuary, 2005)

Buy the album here

Let’s start by addressing why this Corrosion of Conformity album, and not Deliverance or Wiseblood, is the topic of this post.  When In The Arms of God made its long-awaited appearance I had been a COC fan for nearly ten years, and I considered both their classic mid-90s albums among my all-time favourites.  Deliverance and Wiseblood are genre-defining albums that bridged the gap from heavy metal to more MTV-friendly hard rock without sacrificing an ounce of the band’s originality, credibility, or identity.  Their southern-fried metal-rock crossover is infused with politicised anger, provocative lyrics, and cultured musicianship.  They are important albums that continue to dominate my thoughts and shape the music that I’m drawn towards.  They are the albums that COC fans will discuss and debate online to determine which is their best.  But neither of them have quite captured my imagination or challenged my preconceptions of the genre in the way of In The Arms of God.  This is an album that intertwines the epic, the personal, the domestic, and all things in between.  It constructs for itself an aural atmosphere that enhances the songs in the moment and the memory of your listening experience after the fact.  It is impassioned song-writing laid down in surprising and exciting ways, and I have no doubts that there are many more COC fans who consider it their favourite record, whether consciously or not.  I am writing about this COC album because it is their best.

Flooding in on a wave of organ, the opening solo sets out COC’s approach on this record: they don’t give a shit what people expect.  This record is going to go where the hell it pleases, is going to ask you questions you’ve never been asked, and isn’t really going to care what your answer is.  It is at times catastrophically heavy but somehow never steps outside of the hard rock/metal crossover for which COC are known.  “Stone Breaker” may have taken fans by surprise on first listen, but it is a spine-tingling and dynamic song that plays with Led Zeppelin guitar epic stylings, hardcore aggression, and gigantic, irresistible riffs that will have people’s heads flying off their necks.  All that without even mentioning the stellar drumming performance of stand-in drummer, Stanton Moore, who brings a depth of sound and drum fill prowess that are impressive and memorable.  The seamless manner in which Mike Dean’s bass sound and Moore’s drum lines work together is testament to their abilities and contributes to a heavier overall sound.  That heaviness continues with “Paranoid Opioid” in which we are thrashed relentlessly by a riff from COC’s hardcore days while being spun into confusion by the psyched-out vocals.  As strong as this opening duo is, it’s third track “It Is That Way” that will have fans feeling at home.  The train samples and echoed drums of the intro give the impression the band are playing in some NOLA dirt patch, while the slower paced bluesy guitar tones from Woody Weatherman and Pepper Keenan’s welcoming drawl hark back to earlier work, and perfectly set up the listener for the album’s most idiosyncratic and atmospheric passage.

“Dirty Hands Empty Pockets/Already Gone”, like its title, is split: part rumbling bass with gravelly spoken word, part giant riff explosions.  It feels like pure COC, but is bold enough to spend more time on building anticipation than on the catchy, headbanging sections.  It’s a decision that pays off with each lunge into that riff being a highlight of the album. “Rise River Rise” is another.  Again displaying patience and a willingness to stand out from its surroundings, this track takes the layered atmospherics to the hilt with three guitar sounds flowing over one another.  A thick electric sound forms the foundation upon which an electro-acoustic riff slides, before squealing leads offer accents and changes of direction.  Pepper Keenan’s hard rock clean vocal and the wailed and whispered backing vocals perfectly complete the epic disaster atmosphere that ties so neatly into the biblical feel of this album.  It is a truly entrancing song.

After extended atmospherics “Never Turns to More” bursts to life with phenomenal drumming and breakneck riffing.  The long bridge section is filled with beautiful guitar and vocal details and fully justifies this track’s status as the album’s longest.  “Infinite War” is much quicker to get to the point.  Blistering with hardcore aggro, tight riffing, and pounding drumming, this song steps on your neck to ram home its simple message.  In the brief moments it eases up the musicianship is astounding.  Weatherman’s leads, the weight of Moore’s drums feeling like 60s and 70s psych, and Keenan’s vocals all bring unique qualities that enhance and diversify this brutal rager. 

COC introduce the album’s final passage with the classically mid-paced “World On Fire”.  Weatherman’s closing solo is epic, and is the final moment of light before the melancholy of “Crown of Thorns” and the utter devastation of “In The Arms of God”.  The former is upsetting with its cries of pain, distorted spoken word samples, and eerie rocking chair sounds building a portentous atmosphere.  The latter takes that atmosphere and throws it in to the heavens with rumbling and cascading drum fills, escalating riffing, and furious screams of Nietzschean angst.  It feels like every muscle is trying to tear itself from your bones as you try to keep up with the desire to explode like the music you’re listening to.  At this moment the entire last hour of music you have listened to feels like nothing more than precursor to this insane riff epic.  It is not without interesting detail either, but the final feeling is one of pure heavy metal exhaustion where every last bit of passion, energy, and anger has been spent in releasing this built-up pressure.

In The Arms of God is breath-taking.  It hits me on every level as hard now as it did when it was released.  There are no faults to be found, no spare moments, and no wasted ideas.  Everything contributes to the whole and that whole makes each song better in return.  I might not convince every COC fan that this record is their best, but I hope that everyone who reads this takes an hour in a room with a stereo turned all the way up, and sets themselves In The Arms of God.  

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #37

Opeth – Deliverance

(Music For Nations, 2001)

Buy the album here

Opeth existed at the crossroads between death metal, folk music, prog, and pure evil.* It is easy to imagine Mikael Åkerfeldt, primary songwriter for Opeth and amusing bloke, standing at such a crossroads and signing a contract with the devil to assign him unmatched talents in this field.  The crossroads would have been isolated in a barren landscape, the sole tree, grand yet lifeless, hanging over the road as if waiting to hang a victim.  As the grey clouds closed in, masking any remaining light, the devil would have approached to whisper hell in your ear. 

That’s what listening to Opeth is like: gothic horror in which the lightness of touch only intensifies the darkness of the subject matter.  This is true for all of Opeth’s truly great albums, My Arms, Your Hearse (1998), Still Life (1999), Blackwater Park (2001), and Deliverance.  This was the Opeth album that found me first, and opened my mind to the possibility of brutally heavy death metal that soothes with acoustic guitar, wandering passages of musical exploration, and satanic lullabies.  Ironically, this is Opeth’s heaviest album, and deliberately so, with Damnation being released as a companion album only months after Deliverance to fully explore the “clean” side of Opeth’s music, and further cement Åkerfeldt’s relationship with Pavement maestro, Steve Wilson.  Approaching the Deliverance/Damnation project as a double album allowed Opeth the freedom to intensify and even exaggerate their characteristics on each record, and produce two distilled versions of what the band had become.  Deliverance is concentrated evil.

You can feel the intent on first track, “Wreath”, with its scarily abrasive sound and pitch-black death growl.  There is no warning here.  “Wreath” lurches out with razor sharp guitars and Lopez’s incredible drumming, precisely balancing double bass speed with restrained snare and cymbal use, and propels the listener into the black hail that is Mikael    

Åkerfeldt’s vocal: “Falling inside again / The nightmare always the same”.  The title track rides in on building waves of guitar punctuated by that solid snare, only to give way to a riff that would have long hair in metal venues worldwide spinning in unison supported by Lopez’s sustained and perfectly produced double bass pedal sound.  “Deliverance” gives the listener little glimpses of respite with a softer overall guitar sound than “Wreath”, experimental passages, gently delivered melodic vocals, and thoughtful lead guitar colour.  Coming in at over 13 minutes, alternating dark and light, Åkerfeldt’s repeated demonic delivery of the line “all over now”, the subtle use of keys, and ending on the album’s signature, and seemingly never-ending, drum beat, this song is the definition of prog death. 

The punishing tension that is built during this epic is dispersed by the softness of the album’s second act.  In “A Fair Judgement” and “For Absent Friends” we learn that even when writing a purposefully heavy album Opeth are unafraid to take their listeners on long, melodic journeys.  Åkerfeldt’s forlorn tone on the former is beautiful, enhanced by delicate rhyming couplets, and allows the lengthy traded solos to stand out fully, while in the latter Opeth simply let the gentle tones of the guitars do the talking.  It’s the last moment of objective beauty that this album will offer you. 

The opening of “Master’s Apprentice” does away with the complexity, the play of light and dark, the beauty, and opts for a giant metal riff and punishing vocals.  It’s an explosive moment on the album that will break your neck and your larynx.  Even the meandering and expressive bridge section later in the song is rudely interrupted by that unmistakable growl and provides only minor reprieve during the closing act.  In the album closer “By the Pain I See in Others” the quiet moments seem intent on simply making the heavier sounds more punishing, every moment of relaxation more and more brief, every false end to the song both difficult to endure and invigorating, like scaling gruelling, false peaks on a Scottish mountain but be provided with an ever more stunning view with each one.  Despite both songs in this final act exceeding 10 minutes, and incorporating multiple approaches to music and wide-ranging instrumentation, they comprise the most direct work Opeth had produced since “Demon of the Fall” and are a fitting finale to their heaviest album.

Opeth’s heaviness sounds natural, as if it had walked out of Scandinavian forests in to your ears, and blends seamlessly with their progressive, gothic, and folk elements.  It is important to acknowledge, however, that it is not natural, and that Åkerfeldt’s stellar songwriting, lyrical imagination, and awareness of tone make this blend work.  He is decidedly unnatural.  Other bands have tried to do what Opeth do, but none have managed to so perfectly occupy all these spaces at once without ever seeming out of place or forced.  It seems to me that Åkerfeldt’s contract with the devil worked out well.  Damnation may await his soul, but at least we’ll always have Deliverance.           

*They still exist, it’s just they’re pretty much 70s prog now.