Mike Dean’s “Not Opposed” to a Future Reunion with Corrosion of Conformity
It’s been more than a year since founding Corrosion of Conformity bassist Mike Dean announced he was leaving the band over logistical issues. The band had only started working on their follow up to 2018’s No Cross, No Crown prior to his announcement and it left folks wondering who would go on to handle the low end for the legendary stoner/sludge/southern metal act.
Fast forward to today and Corrosion of Conformity now has Down guitarist and Pantera bass tech Bobby Landgraf filling the void left by Dean. The band’s also pretty far along the recording process and we should all have their upcoming double album in our hands. Sounds like everyone’s completely moved on, right?
Well, not entirely. During a recent interview with The New York Hardcore Chronicles Live! (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), Dean intonated that he could envision a world where he back back to the fold.
“Never say never. Never say never. Yeah, it’s possible. I’m not opposed to it. It just seemed too cumbersome to make new music. They managed to make some new music [since my exit], so I’m glad for them. And I think their record’s gonna sound good.”
When Dean left, he said the main reason he was walking away from the band he helped create was that most of the band members lived in different parts of the country. With the inability to really sit down and jam in a shared space working on new music and honing their back catalog, things slowed down too much for him. Couple that with the fact that drummer Reed Mullin passed away in 2020 and you’ve got a situation that became too untenable for Dean.
Even though he’s moved on to form a new band called Archaos, Dean said he believed things were going well in Corrosion of Conformity in his absence.
“They got Bobby, who played in guitar in Down, who, [it] turns out, he’s actually a real bass player — he plays a P-bass with his fingers. He used to play bass in a band called Snakes Of Central Texas, and he’s a hard-working dude. He techs for Pantera and stuff like that. So he really shows up every day, and they’re sounding good. So I’m glad for them. But never say never. In the immediate, I’ve got this band called Archaos, and we’re just getting started recording now. So that’s kind of [what I’m] focused on, creating some stuff with them. And these are local guys so we can just, ‘Hey, you wanna rehearse?’ And we rehearse, and we don’t have to fly in from far corners of the country.”
