Wise Blood vs. Deliverance: Which Corrosion of Conformity Album Wins? (Verse Chorus Verse Ep. 301)

Episode 301 of Verse Chorus Verse — Evil's second 10 out of 10, and the companion piece to last week's Clutch Blast Tyrant deep dive.Corrosion of Conformity's Wise Blood (1996) is the Grammy-nominated follow-up to Deliverance, with James Hetfield singing background vocals on Man or Ash — not because Pepper Keenan asked nicely, but because Hetfield wanted to be on it. That's the kind of peer respect COC had at their peak.The central debate: is this better than Deliverance? Evil flip-flopped the entire prep week — whichever album he was listening to was the better one — and landed on 10/10 for both. DL gives it a 9/10 and keeps going back to Deliverance, but calls Drowning in a Daydream (the Grammy-nominated track) a 12-out-of-10 song.Deep dives into: Pepper Keenan's arc from opening for Metallica in 1996 to being the gravitational center of a whole Southern metal scene (COC, Down, NOLA), the Woody/Pepper guitar tone pairing — SGs into Mesa Boogies, one panned center and one on the perimeter — Long Whip Big America as Evil's surprise #1 pick, the Alice in Chains DNA in Bottom Feeder, and why Pepper's vocal delivery is what separates this from everything else in the genre.Listener question: Deliverance or Wise Blood — which one wins?Next up: the Radiohead series finale.