Longtime CORROSION OF CONFORMITY Producer Discusses Making Of 'In The Arms Of God'

Longtime CORROSION OF CONFORMITY producer John Custer recently spoke to The News & Observer about the making of the group's latest album, "In the Arms of God".

"With this record, the thing we talked about the most was the framework," Custer said. "It's one thing to bitch about something; it's another to frame it in terms of talking about God. And when you talk about God, you're a stone's throw away from talking about death, especially when it's in terms of songs sung from the vantage point of a dead soldier in a grave somewhere. The bottom end of the record has a lot of God imagery — a lot of thunder, the bass tones and toms are very thunderous to give it a real wartime vibe. The title song, I wanted the beginning of that to sound like a soundtrack for 'Shock and Awe.'

"My job was to make the sonics surrounding the words more vivid," Custer added. "So when you hear thunder and disturbing sounds that kinda evoke creeping death, it's because you can't put lyrics this poignant with music that sounds like 'Hell yeah, let's party!' Pepper wrote a great record, and I felt I had to be respectful sonically. So it sounds big and dark and raw, instead of a record some guy would rock out to in his Hummer."

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY are closing in on its first gold record (signifying 500,000 copies sold) for 1994's "Deliverance". The album only made it as high as No. 155 on the Billboard charts, but it has continued to sell and currently stands at 436,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"In a lot of ways, those guys haven't changed one bit," Custer said. "I was a big C.O.C. fan even before I started working with them. A long time ago, they played at this 'battle of the bands' show in town, and fans were moshing around so much they started knocking stuff off the stage. There was this whole melee, a riot broke out, they pulled the plug, police came onstage, the band was escorted out. It was really something. Some other band won the contest, but I ran into one of the C.O.C. guys a year later and told him about seeing that gig. 'Yeah, that sucked,' he said. 'No, it didn't,' I said. 'The whole thing was almost scripted, it was so cool. Nobody even remembers who won, but everybody remembers you guys.' "