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Review Summary: The North Carolina band’s fourth record sees Pepper Keenan’s debut in the lead vocalist role, as well being the first to be without any of their earlier thrash or hardcore influences. Southern fried rock 'n' roll. Nestled somewhere within the spheres of doom, sludge and stoner, COC offer a more stripped down sonic quality that lends as much to classic rock and metal (particularly Sabbath, but surely that goes without saying) as it does to the more extreme influences of their swampland contemporaries. There are grooves, blues and guitar harmonies a plenty, albeit via the bassy Vox guitar tones that typify sludge music. The opening riff of ‘Albatross’ exemplifies this the most, and you’ll find your foot tapping and head nodding involuntarily when greeted with its mammoth size. The Riff, rock and metal’s key identifier, is out in full force, particularly on the aforementioned ‘Albatross’, ‘Broken Man’ and ‘Seven Days’, the latter of which one can’t help but close one’s eyes and surrender to its seductive grooves. Like much of the album, the riff’s beauty lies in its simplicity, sticking to the alchemical Iommi formula of forging gargantuan riffs out of as few notes as possible. The album also showcases its gentler moments, particularly in interlude ‘Without Wings’, an instrumental comprised of acoustic guitar and strings.
Deliverance. Redemption. Forgiveness. There’s a degree of pseudo-Biblical lyricisms to be found throughout the record, furthering the notion that COC provide a continuation of the blues tradition, all pentatonic passages and lyrics concerning the human condition. Keenan’s vocals occupy a space somewhere between Layne Staley’s detached melancholy and James Hetfield’s macho rasp, comparisons to the former vocalist being most pronounced in ‘Pearls Before Swine’, a track that segues between doom and grunge so effortlessly you’d be surprised the writing credits don’t include Jerry Cantrell.
It’s a fairly lengthy record, and as such there are the predictable filler tracks, but nothing to degrade the integrity of the album. A great introduction to stoner rock for those unfamiliar with the genre, the album is an undisputed underground classic. Deliverance is the LP that would define COC, whilst awakening the world to the American South being a hotbed of accomplished underground metal. Album highlights include ‘Heaven’s Not Overflowing’, ‘Albatross’ and ‘Seven Days’.
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darthsader16 (4)
Deliverance is a classic hard rock/heavy metal record of the 90's when grunge was making it's exit a...
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I've only heard Clean My Wounds, which was a pretty great song. Very typical grunge sounding single of the era, but still a nice tune.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
COC aren't a grunge band by any means.
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Oh I know, I was just saying that the single sounded somewhat influenced by the grunge movement of the time. Hope I've made myself clearer now.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Fair enough, I see what you mean. One could draw comparisons between COC and AIC, but that says more about AIC's doom leanings than it does about COC.
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Well, AiC was always a band highly rooted in heavy metal (and sludge metal as well, in the self titled), but listening to "Clean My Wounds" and "Albatross" here I guess I could point out some of the grunge bands' influence on CoC for the album. I'd have to hear the entire record to say that, though.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Aside from 'Pearls Before Swine', I don't really hear anything particularly grunge.
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To be fair, it's difficult to draw a comparison to a movement such as grunge because there's so much different stuff you can find there. It's basically a hybrid, a fusion of punk and metal, and lots of bands stand on different edges of the spectrum. If you take a band such as Nirvana or Mudhoney, they're up front punk. If you take Skin Yard, Soundgarden or Melvins, you hear a lot more doom, sludge or heavy metal, sometimes all combined in one. From what I've heard (which was only two songs anyway) I can hear some aspects of the more "metal" bands of the grunge movement.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Yeah, that's fair. Although I'd say it's simplistic to refer to grunge as simply a hybrid of punk and metal.
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BAH
dun dunana
dun dunana
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Yes that's true, I could've elaborated on that more. But that only goes to show just how different so many grunge bands sound from one another. If you take Screaming Trees, Mad Season or Truly, for example, they add a lot of psychedelic influences to that Seattle sound. You have Brad or Tuatara incorporating funk and world music... There's just such a huge variety of different sounds there that I find it hard to say "grunge" as a genre. For me, it's best suited as a way to describe the Seattle music movement of that period.
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"If you take a band such as Nirvana or Mudhoney, they're up front punk."
Bleach is definately more Metal than anything...
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That one has a little bit of both, maybe more influences of metal than punk but I'd say it's balanced. Anyway, if you take Incesticide, Nevermind and even In Utero to an extent (if you ignore Dumb in that case, which is a pretty cool song anyway), they're clearly punk albums.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Mad Season are brilliant. Describing them as grunge feels like an insult in my book.
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They are brilliant and time will prove they'll always be. Legendary album they've left us.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
True dat
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