THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #18: Demoncy – Joined in Darkness (Baphomet Records, 1999)

More so than just about any other metal album I’ve ever heard, Demoncy’s Joined in Darkness is about creating and sustaining an atmosphere.  The music is a trance-inducing hellish miasma of tremolo-picked riffage that seems to move at a snail’s pace; even the fast parts feel like they’re being played at half speed, making it the perfect album to listen to in the dark on a good pair of headphones, preferably while in a heavily altered state.

Corrosion of Conformity – s/t (Candlelight, 2012)

I first discovered Corrosion of Conformity during the mid-’90s Pepper Keenan (guitar/vocals) era; by then, they had fully traded in the crossover thrash of 1985’s Animosity album in favor of the swaggering, metallic southern rock of Deliverance and Wiseblood. That’s the COC I had come to know and love over the years, so I was admittedly apprehensive upon hearing that the band had reconvened without Keenan at the helm to record their first new material since 2005’s underrated In the Arms of God. Would they abandon the smoked-out stoner-isms that had made COC so near and dear to my heart in favor of revisiting the crossover days of yore? Would Keenan’s absense leave an unfillable hole in their sound?