Crucial blast's favorite hardcore band of all time? Might be. I can say for sure that when I bought my first copy of Corrosion Of Conformity's Eye For An Eye 1984 debut Eye For An Eye, I was completely pulverized by the rabid, brain-damaged aggression that was blasted out by these Raleigh, NC punks. It's still one of the most unhinged-sounding records of its time, recorded raw and low-fi by a band that was wholly unconcerned with musical precision and totally focused on tearing your head off with their ultra-fast, mangled brand of thrash. This stuff is eons away from the grooving Southern sludge metal that brought the band to minor fame in the 90s; the savage noisy hardcore on this record is most aligned with the most batshit fringes of early American hardcore, bands like Die Kreuzen, Void, and Seige, as well as taking some of their cues from Black Flag. Like the Flag, the guys in C.O.C. were big fans of metal, and sought to incorporate huge blats of Sabbathy sludge and vicious speed-metal influenced riffing into their sound, and you can hear a bit of Greg Ginn's influence on Woody Weatherman's guitar playing, which obviously nods to the atonality of Ginn's style but also uses feedback and a kind of brain-damaged blues-informed approach in a way that became his signature sound in the 80s.

Since it's release almost thirty years ago, Eye For An Eye has become increasingly hard to find on any format and has been out of print for ages, but now we've got a new reissue of this psychotic HC classic from their new label Candlelight that basically revamps the 1989 Caroline Records release that bundled the album together with the Six Songs With Mike Ep. Released on both Cd and a deluxe double Lp vinyl edition (limited to one thousand copies on gatefold 180 gram colored vinyl), this is one of those essential albums for fans of true maniacal hardcore. With a chaotic studio performance and a feral, utterly ugly sound that was unlike any of the thrash metal and crossover bands that C.O.C. shared the stage with, this barbaric stuff, the product of a gang of North Carolina punks who had gobbled up all the Void, Black Flag, Discharge and Black Sabbath album they could get their greasy mitts on, and puked it back up in the form of COC. Eye For An Eye remains one of my all-time favorite albums of messed-up, chaotic, psychotic hardcore punk, with just the right amount of metallic crunch behind their sloppy riffs and slithering breakdowns. Long before Eyehategod first started to ooze out their sludgy diseased punk, Corrosion Of Conformity were mining the wonky, skronky hardcore of Black Flag and the lumbering doom-laden heaviness of Black Sabbath to create their unique, utterly savage brand of Southern hardcore. You can hear that heavy 70's rock influence and Sabbath-adoration all over this, a twenty song assault of out-of-tune violence that is still unmatched in it's sickliness and aggression. While original COC singer Eric Eycke left the band after this album and dropped out of sight, his vocal performance can be genuinely frightening, a guttural, mush-mouthed howl that sounds truly sick. Songs like "Minds Are Controlled" are as fast and maniacal as what Siege was doing around the same time, with borderline blasts hurtling through the explosive punk, but they've got these awesome sludgy slower songs like "College Town" that combine their raw, violent hardcore riffs and warped guitar work with slower, Sabbathian heaviness. There's some weird Hendrix-smeared shred on stompers like "Co-Exist" and "Dark Thoughts", lots of stomping rock hooks and those weird twangy out-of-tune solos, weird tape-noises that introduce most of the songs, and the absolutely crushing cover of Judas Priest's version of "Green Manalishi" that closes the album.

In addition, the hard-to-find 1985 Ep Six Songs With Mike is included, featuring bassist Mike Dean taking over vocals, made up of three songs off of Eye For An Eye and three new songs that were recorded for a couple of compilation records and later collected here. Killer stuff.

This is a fucking classic album of psychotic, noise-addled hardcore and tweaked-out proto-sludge that is absolutely essential listening to anyone into the crazed hardcore of Die Kreuzen, Void, and United Mutation as well as the more recent spate of hard rock-obsessed hardcore heard from newer bands like Annihilation Time and Lecherous Gaze.