CORONER — Grin (review)

CORONER — Grin album cover Album · 1993 · Groove Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
bonnek
After perfecting their Technical Thrash on 'Mental Vortex', Coroner found themselves in a changed musical landscape. It was 1993 and Grunge had swept clean the earth. Both the long-standing Thrash acts as well as new metal bands had scaled down their latent progressive ambitions towards more accessible melodious Thrash, Alt Metal, Groove metal, Death-Thrash and so on. Coroner did a make-over as well, but not entirely into more accessible directions.

'Grin' is a very eclectic album, the slower pace and almost repetitive rhythmic drill marks a certain move towards groove metal. With the use of the spoken voice samples, there's almost an industrial edge to it. The vocals remained the same old merciless snarls, but the guitars often abandon typical thrash riffing in favor for more complex and chromatic progressions that I find similar to Voivod and Rush. Then there's the spacey and/or jazzy elements in some of the leads and solos and the attention to building up a more atmosphere setting in the instrumental sections (the intro of Caveat for instance). Add that all up and you arrive at what's for me one of the defining albums of Progressive Metal (the non-Dream Theatre kind that is). Alas, the album went by unnoticed and it was the more mainstream melodic approach of Dream Theatre that inspired whole new generations of Prog Metal bands. A damn shame if you ask me.

'Grin' is difficult album and it's hard to categorize. It even alienated some Coroner fans instead of luring in massive new hordes of them. Nevertheless, this is one for my top 10 and my favorite Thrash album next to Megadeth's RIP. An absolute masterpiece, but it sure has cost me some years till it completely grew on me.
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The Angry Scotsman wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Good album and certainly interesting!

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