Детали релиза : Corrosion Of Conformity - No Cross No Crown (2018) [FLAC (tracks)]

ALBUM DESCRIPTION
The best news about this tenth album, clearly, is the grand homecoming of Pepper Keenan. Down's future was looking pretty ropey when the guitarist-singer came back to the group that he had left in 2005 after having managed to keep the two projects running in parallel for almost 15 years. It isn't that the other members of COC were any worse musicians for his absence; or that Mike Dean (bass, vocals), Woody Weatherman (guitar) and Reed Mullin play second fiddle to Keenan on No Cross No Crown; but it was this line-up that saw the group become an indisputable part of the elite of metal, of any style. What's most surprising is that Keenan appears here more inspired than ever. If his partnership with the faintly unstable Phil Anselmo gave him little respite, he has hardly emerged from it worn out - far from it. Judging from the copious menu served up on No Cross No Crown, one might guess that before returning to COC he must have built up quite a store of ideas in the thirteen years since In the Arms of God, the last album on which he featured (notwithstanding his name appearing on the ninth album, IX). Either way, it’s clear he hasn't composed all this since the 2015 reunion tour... As ever, there is little filler here, even if one might doubt whether the ample instrumental breaks are really as indispensable as all that. On most tracks, COC has no compunction in focusing in on heavy classic rock, which on more than one occasion skirts the long shadow of Black Sabbath. Wolf Named Crow is redolent of Mountain or Mahogany Rush, with an accent on some very Hendrixian guitars - and the great Jimi is also cited, almost directly, on Old Disaster. Elsewhere, Little Man and Forgive Me sound like an homage to the duelling guitars of Thin Lizzy or Lynyrd Skynyrd; The Luddite could have been a borrowing from Monster Magnet, while Nothing Left to Say is full of the echoes of the colleagues Metallica and their Low Man's Lyric or Bleeding Me. No Cross No Crown is at once diverse and balanced, and should rank among COC's finest works.
©JPS/Qobuz