For Corrosion of Conformity bassist Mike Dean, playing in front of a huge crowd and hearing his lyrics sung back to him is a good feeling. But when the crowd’s native language isn’t even English, that’s when he really gets excited.

“It’s cool,” Dean said from a club in New Orleans, where the band was playing with Orange 9mm. “It’s very strange seeing people sing along to songs when they’re not even sung in their language. It’s interesting.”

Dean’s most recent experience of this nature came just a few months ago, while opening for Metallica on a European tour.

It was nothing new for COC, who has also made the cross-seas trip alone and with such powerful grunge-rock acts as Soundgarden.

But now the band is back in the United States, playing clubs and medium sized venues like it has since its formation in 1982. And although the group is preparing to get back into sold-out arenas with Metallica, it can’t help but feel at home.

“This kind of thing shoots a hole in any illusions of grandeur,” Dean said about being back in the clubs. “It’s a different kind of experience.”

That’s not to say Dean and his cohorts don’t enjoy the change. He described the club scene as being “a little more intimate” than arenas.

“It’s easier to connect in a smaller place,” Dean said. “Playing in front of thousands of people is great, but that’s a little more impersonal.”

Corrosion of Conformity’s favorite places to play are the areas where it gets a lot of radio play, which unfortunately narrows out a lot of Midwestern cities.

Dean will be the first to admit that the band has never gotten much media attention outside of college publications.

“It would be nice to see them hyping the bands that sell fewer records,” Dean said about the many music magazines. “But you have to think about the criteria they have for a band, which is not exactly flattering.

“For years and years Rolling Stone never once mentioned the Beastie Boys. They always avoid the things that are really happening.”

Such things as successfully fusing the gaps between punk, thrash and metal, or developing an enormous fan base with very little exposure.

Things like recording six records in 14 years, all but the last two with different line-ups, and still managing to create the same powerful sound with each attempt.

What separates COC from most bands is its clear realization that getting there, waiting for their dreams to come true, is really half the fun.

“Drowning In A Daydream,” the band’s first single of the band’s latest release, Wiseblood, explores that exact issue.

“Daydream,” is just a sample of what the band describes as its most honest record ever.

“Each attempt has been pretty different from the one before it,” Dean explained. “The whole preparation for Wiseblood had to do with us coming together. We kind of gelled in that time period before going into the studio, which really led us in a different direction.”

Corrosion released its first record in 1983 as a trio made up of Dean, guitarist Woody Weatherman and drummer Reed Mullin.

It wasn’t until 1990 when the band discovered lead singer Pepper Keenan. The band released Blind the following year and Wiseblood’s closest ancestor, Deliverance, in 1994.

“Blind was a big departure for us,” Dean said. “[On Deliverance] we wanted to do something a little bit differently, push the envelope on a couple of things. Wiseblood was more of a raw approach—we were well into the red on the needle for most of the recording.”

COC’s next record could be the biggest departure yet. According to Dean, they have talked about “dusting off the master tapes” and giving them to different producers to do some remixing.

“Remixes aren’t necessarily a good idea if you’re just doing it for the sake of doing it,” he said. “I think they have a lot of potential if you are original.

“Industrial style remixes are not the most enjoyable—I mean a drummer could drop a drumstick and you would never know.”

Other than Keenan, who supposedly can’t decide for sure where he’s from, Corrosion of Conformity call Raleigh, N.C. home.

Dean describes the music there as a “gag-soul thing,” much different than the alternative sound that nearby Chapel Hill is known for.

“A lot of them tend not to be really heavy rock,” Dean said about the bands in Raleigh. “The indy rock scene from Chapel Hill is not very up-to-par in my opinion.”

Keenan, who writes most of COC’s lyrics, holds the story behind the album title.

While the band was recording the disc, he somehow managed to rent a room at a nearby boarding house, where he was allowed to stay if he paid in advance each week.

In the process of writing his songs, Keenan began taping random lyrics up to the wall of his room.

“It looks pretty unusual to any casual observer,” Dean said. “You can imagine how it looked to some of the crack-heads staying there.”

As the story turns out, the guys at the boarding house began taking note of the wall and began to label Keenan as some kind of freak or burn-out poet.

“One of the other guys called him a wiseblood,” Dean said. “Yo man, you a wiseblood, he told him.”

Corrosion Of Conformity opens for Metallica tonight at 7 p.m. at Hilton Coliseum.

All seating is reserved with ticket prices at $25.50. For additional ticket information call 233-1888.