Pepper Keenan has confirmed he is working on his first solo album, on the latest episode of "We Wreck Records," the podcast hosted by Christina Rowatt of New Noise magazine. "Oh, man, I'm pulling out all the stops on this sucker," he said.
The songs are not new. Keenan has been quietly setting material aside for years, waiting for a version of himself he thought could carry it. "I have a shitload of songs I've been saving. A lot of them I was keeping and I was, like, 'Well, I'll just save this till I get older.' 'Cause they were very like stare-too-long type of songs. I don't know if you know what that is. Those type of things. I was, like, 'Ah, I'll just save them till I get older.' And I was, like, 'Fuck, I'm old.'"
The record is still at the assembly stage rather than in production. "It's in the back of my brain. I'm starting to slowly organize stuff, so when I have some downtime, I can start saying, 'I want this guy to play guitar on this one.' 'I need this drummer to help on this one.'"
Keenan has been central to Southern heavy music since the early 1990s, shaping the sound of both CORROSION OF CONFORMITY and DOWN with riffs built on groove, grit and a raw power that is recognisable within a bar. His writing has always balanced weight against restraint, and his willingness to sit in the pocket rather than crowd it has marked a generation of heavy bands.
He joined CORROSION OF CONFORMITY in 1990, though he did not take over lead vocals until the recording of 1994's "Deliverance." In 2014, after roughly a decade touring the world as a guitarist in the New Orleans supergroup DOWN, he reconnected with the core COC trio of Woody Weatherman, Mike Dean and Reed Mullin and went back to the road in earnest. He has appeared on seven CORROSION OF CONFORMITY studio albums, plus three full-lengths and two EPs with DOWN.
There is no shortage of work around the solo project either. CORROSION OF CONFORMITY's most recent double album, "Good God / Baad Man," arrived in April via Nuclear Blast, produced by Warren Riker with cover art by New Orleans artist Scott Guion. DOWN — Keenan alongside Philip H. Anselmo, Kirk Windstein, Jimmy Bower and Pat Bruders — release a new studio album, "Volume V," in November.