A band called Coroner

Separated by three decades

 Sometimes a band feels like your own special thing. I ran into Coroner in the pages of Guitar World. One of their albums, Grin, landed on the Best Albums of 1993 list. 

At that time, you got no samples – you took the reviewer at their word. If you dropped $15 on a CD, you went in blind and hope you actually liked the music. We all found flops in those days. 

Fortunately n the case of Coroner, Grin swept me up. It was technically impressive and lacked the the Cookie Monster-style death metal that were always a dealbreaker for me. The singer, Ron Broder, growled, but at least he enunciated. He sounds like he could use a glass of water, but that’s it. The Lethargic Age chugs right out of the instrumental opening. Paralyzed, Mesmerized leans on some subtle grooves in its eight minutes. Internal Conflicts runs full throttle from its first note. Even the closer, Host, moves with menace over its spoken-word verses as a dark bass riff picks up steam and crescendos on the chorus. The music diverged heavily from thrash, death, groove and other metal subgenres of the time that I didn’t really fit anywhere. I liked that. 

Not long after, I grabbed Mental Vortex, their previous album, which stayed in steady rotation as well. The tempos were slower on tracks like Son of Lilith but still full of intricate passages that left me wondering how a trio could pull them off. 

When it came to Coroner, I had no one to commiserate with. We had Swiss exchange students in high school – male students with long hair and metal fan looks. I asked them about the band. Crickets. No one heard of them. Any effort to introduce them to my guitar-playing friends went nowhere. I played their cover of I Want You (She’s So Heavy) for my friend, a Beatles purist. He was horrified. 

The Beatles are often hard to cover, but this cover fits the band well. I felt it better that they tackled the heaviest Beatles song instead of something lighter. 

Grin and Mental Vortex stayed around for a while. Coroner dropped a compilation two years later, by which time I phased out of metal thanks to growth of more extreme and unappetizing subgenres. The compilation was essentially a new album, with new tracks and covers spread among fan favorites. Seeing the resale prices I wish I grabbed it, since almost all of those songs were exclusive to that album. 

I had no clue Coroner had broken up and would not resurface for more than 15 years.

In my late thirties, I found I had not lost the touch for those albums. I rediscovered their earlier albums, although only No More Color stuck to any degree. At one point I owned Punishment for Decadence on vinyl, but it ended up going after it proved a little too unrefined for me. 

Rumors of new music had come and gone for a decade. The band conducted short tours, sometimes brushing the U.S. They never came close enough for me to rationalize the distance.  

In late December 2025, I happened to catch a year-end metal roundup, including the album Dissonance Theory ... by Coroner. I completely missed the news after years of rumors and had no idea they ended the 30-year drought.   

I scrambled to download it. Ten songs and 40-something minutes later, they easily bridge the 30 years since their last release. Dissonance Theory followed the band’s past template – a short non-metal instrumental, then the pulverizing but intricate songs followed. There’s advancement but the band does not stray too far from its strengths. 

The song Prolonging even complements the big thrash riffs with an organ solo that never feels out of place. Coroner has never been afraid to throw in a non-metal flourish or two – a didgeridoo is central to the instrumental that opens Grin. 

When they finally played a show in easy driving distance (Denver in February), I flaked for an old reason – I had no one to go with, because no one knew the band. 

But missing the show wasn’t a big deal. After three decades, Coroner finally delivered some new music. As in my teen years, that requires many immersive listens.