GRIN

"We wanted to make the greatest record, ever". That's what Tom Vetterli said on the Coroner - Rewind documentary. Well, I don't know which album is the greatest record ever, but to my taste it is one of the best Heavy Metal albums, ever, including the future ones.

The band tried to realize their ambition at Greenwood Studios in Switzerland, a very expensive studio which Noise managed to book just because Queen pulled off the last moment and they landed a good price for it. Tom Vetterli was the mastermind of this ambitious plan. The tension that this project imposed on the band members was such that finally the group split. But let's focus on the music. Having perfected in just one album their new direction of Mental Vortex, it was time for Coroner to move into something new. The guitars are lowered to D now and the tempos are slower except on Internal Conflicts (once again samples from a movie are included and this time it is Aliens) which is the only track that could fit in a previous Coroner album. Everything else is totally different and well ahead of its time. On Grin there are elements from the industrial and the alternative metal scene, as well as a certain avant-garde tinge (perhaps influenced by their mentors Celtic Frost). The riffs are unbelievably groovy and heavy wrapped in a dark and sometimes even threatening atmosphere. The most illuminating example is Host which could well be used for a horror movie. This song is dragging and suddenly a sequencer that could be heard in a techno song comes in - and the metalheads of the time scratch their heads in disbelief. The answer to my question why Coroner never became a household name is this: they were too experimental, too progressive, too complex, too technical, too futuristic for the majority of the metal fans who seem to be satisfied by their favourite bands regurgiating the same old stuff. More than that, I don't think that Noise was the right label which didn't quite believe in them. Whatever the reasons, Grin signalled the end of the band and, what is even more sad, scarcely it is mentioned when the topic about the best metal albums is breached. Sometimes when I listen to it, the goal mentioned by Tom Veterrli comes to my mind and I'd like to tell him "But...you did!".

Verdict: an ABSOLUTELY essential album for the fans of progressive metal. Even if, eventually, you don't like it, you truly have to give it the chance it deserves.