If you’re a fan of Corrosion Of Conformity, you’re certainly aware of the division within its fan base. On one side you have the older fans who were first introduced to the band’s initial hardcore/crossover/thrash sound. On the other side are the fans that came aboard for the more accessible sound of Blind, released in 1991.

“I think it used to be that simplistic, but now it’s even more complex,” Dean said. “There were a certain amount of people that definitely were on board with the Blind album. We incorporated all these musical elements that were really ambitious. Most of the original hardcore people moved on from that and there are younger kids who are in the theoretical idea — they like older hardcore type of stuff and they want to hear Animosity. Then there are people who like Deliverance or Wiseblood. There are a lot of people that really want to hear stuff that they saw on MTV like “Vote with a Bullet” from Blind. Then there are people who sort of got into this newer stuff. There’s various consistencies and it’s really hard to keep everybody happy, so we just don’t even try.”

The Raleigh, North Carloina-based band has managed to forge a solid 30-plus year career. The trio, consisting of guitarist Woody Weatherman, drummer Reed Mullin and bassist/vocalist Mike Dean, has experienced several member changes, a couple of hiatuses and various musical landscape shifts throughout its existence. On its new album, IX, COC has injected a combination of its earlier crossover stuff with the later metallic, sludgy sound. Something that should keep every kind of COC fan happy. “It keeps us happy, that’s all we know,” Dean said. “One of the things we like to do that turns up our collective influences is to find a way to combine them, that’s kind of what we do. The new record definitely does cover a lot of sonic territory and some of it is vaguely familiar but it also has a slight mix to it.”

The songwriting on IX dictates a conscious effort on the band’s part to combine all its previous material into one solid sound. Dean says it happened differently. “I think they happened pretty organically. We approached with the conscious effort a couple of times, most notably the last record (2012’s S/T). It was kind of intended originally to be our musical statement and do some material that was influenced by Animosity, but in a new light and a new point a view. But quickly that just broadened down into what we collected, and the ideas just came natural. I don’t get into setting out a concept, it ends up being really free-flowing. The material just comes out and we have a hard time really directing too much where that’s going to go. All we can do is sort it out in the end.“

Geographically, COC was located pretty far away from the initial east coast/NYC punk scene, as well as being distanced from the west coast American punk movement. The band formed its initial hardcore/crossover thrash sound by culling its influences from many different musical sources and locations.

“The biggest thing would be Bad Brains out of Washington, DC and NYC. Black Flag out of Los Angeles. And D.O.A. out of Vancouver, British Columbia would be our big three I would say. Also a lot of other DC bands (influenced us). We would go up to DC and see some shows and (those bands) kind of changed our lives and made us say, ‘Hey, we can do that.’ There’s one band called Void in particular. They were kind of like us in that they sort of picked up on having fun with the hardcore genre by inserting heavy metal and hard rock influences into it. That’s how people came to talk about us and eventually they started calling us crossover. At the time, I didn’t really appreciate the term crossover, people tried to put us in a box. We definitely had a side of the west coast stuff too because that’s really the origins of hardcore in the United States. It’s also where that combination with the metal kind of happened. We went out there and we felt like we were a big part of what was happening.”

In 1987, Dean left the band before its breakthrough album Blind emerged. “Basically, I started an awesome career delivering things on my bicycle in San Francisco and Philadelphia. The band, I was a little disappointed. I thought they didn’t really step out with its most original material. They seemed to be playing it a little safe. Until a little while went by and I picked up this record called Blind, and I was just floored. Karl (Agell), who had been in School of Violence, the hardcore band, I didn’t really know he could sing like Ian Gillan. The material was a little technical metal, a little bit Bad Brains, a little bit crazy stuff. I was impressed. A lot of people were impressed.”

A key factor for Blind’s success was not only the pickup of new vocalist Agell, but the addition of guitarist Pepper Keenan. Keenan has never officially left COC, but currently plays in a little band called Down. However, Dean assures me that there’s still a spot reserved for him in the COC lineup. “There’s definitely a spot. We’d like to make it happen. Things are just nebulous and we always wanted to do another record after In The Arms Of God. But living down in New Orleans and being in a busy and successful band like Down, it’s definitely a challenge to make time for other things. At this point it hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean we’re not into doing something. Everybody has kind of indicated that it would be a positive thing. There’s a lot of moving parts and it’s just a matter of logistics and scheduling.”

Dean has made guest appearances on several different artist’s projects, including Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl’s Probot in 2004. “This kind of goes full-circle back to what I was saying about Void from DC because Dave was from DC and he played in the band Scream. So we knew him from then. So he wanted to do a record with some of his favorite vocalists of metal and hardcore. On a track he had lined up for COC, he got Jon Dupree to play guitar on it, who was in Void. For the song, Dave sent me a short little tape. I wrote some lyrics and about 10 minutes later we had a vocal track. I just wanted to do something that was Bad Brains-inspired on the track and it kind of captured it. It was a cool record. Right now, Reed Mullin is doing something Probot-like called Teenage Time Killers, where they get a mass collaboration of people. It’s got Max Cavalera, Jello Biafra, Randy Blythe and many others. It’s going to be like Probot on steroids.”