Corrosion of Conformity debut new drummer Nick Shabatura in Atlanta

Nick Shabatura’s first night with Corrosion of Conformity answered the biggest question around the band’s 2026 run: could a new drummer keep the groove heavy without sanding off the bite. The answer, at Hell at The Masquerade in Atlanta on April 7, seemed to be yes. Fan-shot footage from the show caught the band moving through its set with the kind of pocket and aggression Corrosion of Conformity fans expect, a crucial sign on the first date of the group’s North American headlining tour with Whores and Crobot.

The Atlanta show arrived just four days after Good God / Baad Man hit via Nuclear Blast on April 3. Produced by Grammy winner Warren Riker, the double album was tracked at Blak Shak Studios in Riffissippi, USA, Dockside Studios in Maurice, Louisiana, and Barry Gibb’s home studio in Miami, Florida. Pepper Keenan made the band’s plan plain before the tour, saying, “The plan was always for me to make this record with the guys and then to find somebody to do the touring.” Shabatura’s job was always the road assignment, not a reinvention of the studio lineup.

That detail matters because Corrosion of Conformity has spent years carrying on after the death of founding drummer Reed Mullin in 2020. Every new drummer conversation around the band still carries that weight, and Shabatura steps into it with a resume that stretches from Desecrate the Hour to the Chicago Nirvana tribute band Smells Like Nirvana. His addition was announced on March 13, and Charlie Benante was among the names tied to his recommendation for the gig, giving the hire an immediate stamp of credibility inside heavy-music circles.

The endorsement did not stop there. Stanton Moore, who played drums on the band’s 2005 album In the Arms of God and recorded the drum tracks for Good God / Baad Man, visited rehearsals in Riffissippi and publicly backed Shabatura, saying he had come prepared and already sounded great with the band. That kind of approval matters in a group built on feel as much as volume, especially when the rhythm section has to support Woody Weatherman, Mike Dean, Bobby Landgraf, and Keenan night after night.

Setlist.fm listed the Atlanta stop as part of the Suffer No Evil Tour, and the pairing of a new album with a new live drummer gave the opening date more than the usual tour-launch feel. It was the first real look at how Shabatura fits Corrosion of Conformity onstage, and in Atlanta he looked less like a temporary booking than a player already inside the band’s heavy, Sabbath-colored pocket.