Coroner
Grin

"Grin" is the hallucinated grimace of delirium, the deformed grin of someone who, for a moment, has seen the abyss. It’s like pointing a gun at the temple of thrash... and pulling the trigger. It's subduing it to its antithesis, slowness, and infecting it with samples and dark and industrial nuances that seem to pervade it like the wind: now as a weak but constant breeze, now as a tempestuous, yet fleeting storm. It’s seeking its essence, only to subvert it.

The reinterpretation of the genre must start from its foundations: the tight and baroque riffing that could still be found in the previous "Mental Vortex" ('91) steps aside, making way for full accords, rarely muted or restrained, left to wander in the void supported only by the rhythm section of Marquis (drums) and Royce (bass). Arpeggios never so beautiful, never so refined and full of contemplated melody ("Paralized, Mesmerized"), tribal rhythms, timid synth appearances, cavernous and guttural voices, sometimes even filtered ("Infernal Conflicts"), becoming choirs of floating souls, themselves lost in the abyss ("Host"). Most notably, Tommy Baron (certainly among the best metal guitarists ever, endowed with versatility and a touch, especially in arpeggio and sweep phases, truly remarkable) definitively sets aside the soloist acrobatics, of which he had proven an excellent interpreter in previous productions, and completes an almost scientific search for cerebral melody, intimately restless and morbid, focusing on the effectiveness of solutions and arrangements, rather than their complexity.

There is a witnessing of the dilatation of times (practically all tracks surpass six minutes) and musical architectures, a new approach to the genre emerges, where ambiguous and unsettling atmospheres surface with greater intensity, the slithery and at the same time abrasive progress of more hypnotic than melodic lines ("Serpent Moves") takes center stage. An ensemble where the aggressiveness of the sound is not at all affected, but rather finds itself nourished by new lifeblood, that of unpredictability, of alien sound and tonality: an "avantgarde thrash" introverted and syncopated, trapped in its intrinsic darkness, where it’s the fear of the unknown that takes hold of the listener, because nothing, or almost, seems to fit the standards of what the genre had, by now too many times (we are in 1993), made heard.

In some episodes, it is still possible to trace reminiscences of the recent past ("The Letargic Age" and, above all, "Infernal Conflicts", perhaps the most regular and "square" episode of the album), it is in the final triptych that the genius takes over. The title track, with its obsessive and claustrophobic refrain, a prelude to a terrifying finale in its hammering minimalism. "Host", with that cynical voice that becomes a fierce growl, the overtly doomy gait, the electronic inserts, and that damned bass that refuses to stop pulsating... before an arpeggio, almost too merciful, comes to show us some pity. And finally "Paralized, Mesmerized", for whom this is written the masterpiece of the album, in which the same song form loses the way home between a suffocating riff, which returns with premeditated circularity to bring the atmospheres of the track back to a violent and dark register, and melodic openings, dreamlike and languid, but never sunny.

"Grin" may not be the masterpiece of Coroner (granted that many prefer the previous "Mental Vortex"), but it remains a beautiful and challenging record. A sort of spiral of sonic decadence, where getting lost is both beautiful and terrible. An enthralling experience, but capable of testing even the most bloodthirsty listener. It's the last album of originals from a band that never garnered the success it deserved, if only for having the courage to dare, to attempt new sonic paths, distancing itself from what had been its genre of belonging. A band strong not only of a genius and innovative compositional taste, but also of a refined technique, besides an impressive executory expertise (especially live).

"Grin" is a skull dressed in velvet. It is the essential. It’s a painting to which all colors have been forcefully stripped... all except black. It’s a man surgically devoid of emotions... all except paranoia.