"I did the entire record in a wheelchair; it was brutally painful.” How a stagediving accident, massive hospital bills and the grunge explosion turned a bunch of "dirtbag punks" into Metallica-approved stoner metal icons

Pepper Keenan and Woody Weatherman portrait shot in New York's meatpacking district in 1994.

If you were a fan of Corrosion Of Conformity in the 1980s, chances are you knew them as hardcore punk hellions. Their first two records howled to life in a flurry of rapid beats and furious riffs that blurred the lines between 80s hardcore and thrash. By the time the 90s rolled around, however, the band were primed to be the leaders of America’s sludge-flecked stoner metal scene. Talk about a change of pace.

“COC was expanding at that time – we’d hit a point where we were basically preaching to the converted, so it wasn’t as exciting as it had been,” admits Corrosion Of Conformity frontman Pepper Keenan, who joined the band as a guitarist in 1989, just as they were about to shift gears. “We were punk rock kids listening to things that were broadening our horizons. We’d always loved Sabbath, but now we could play that shit!”