If you ever find yourself disappointed that your favourite active band hasn’t released an album in some time, then you should have tried being a Coroner fan prior to the 17th October 2025. I say this because fans of this iconic Swiss Thrash Metal outfit have been left without a new record since 1993’s ‘Grin’. That’s right, it has been 32 years (or over seven hundred days prior to my own birth) since the Metal world last basked in the brilliance of a new Coroner album. In this huge timespan between releases the band entered a 14 year hiatus, fatigued from the constraints of relentless touring, and with each member pursuing their own projects before eventually reuniting once again as a touring act in 2010. Stating that they had clearly flirted with the idea of releasing new material during interviews post reformation we have now, at long last arrived, 15 years post reformation at Coroner album number six ‘Dissonance Theory’. This begs the question, can a veteran band with an illustrious discography really take a 32-year gap between releases and still sound as good as ever?
Two months prior to the album’s release, Coroner dropped the first single from this upcoming full length, entitled ‘Renewal’. It is a song that I spent a considerable amount of time replaying and trying to soak in as much as possible. It was clear that the band sounded focused and tight. It showed a certain familiar precision and desperate intensity. If the performance was anything to go by; it was as if Coroner hadn’t ever really gone on hiatus at all. Although the production was different to that which I had become so used to with older Coroner albums, they were definitely shooting for something more modern; a loud, clean and busy mix, and I wasn’t exactly too impressed with it initially. Fast forward to release, and I have now digested this album countless times. With the benefit of hindsight, even though it served as the lead single, I do think that Renewal is far from the strongest song on the album.
After opening the album with the tense, whisper driven and digitised intro track ‘Oxymoron’ the first proper song, entitled ‘Consequence’ opens to Tommy Vetterli’s classically Coroner sounding guitar riff, some quiet rock organs float above the growing drums before the band transfigures into the cautious sounding Thrash Metal that plays out through this introductory song about the potential dangers of AI. All of the instruments sound massive and downright explosive. Ron Broder’s distinctive growls no longer sit quietly amongst the mix like on the older albums, here his rasp is centre stage, leading the charge from the front and his voice sounds brilliant, perhaps the best it has ever sounded on a Coroner album. After this awakening, we are introduced to ‘Sacrificial Lamb’, a passionate mid tempo meditation on the value of ‘laying down one’s life for the flock’. The instruments in the initial half are frankly, a little bland and by-the-numbers, but thankfully the tension picks up with more interesting ideas in the latter half and we are gifted with a wonderful guitar solo from Vetterli.
‘Crisium Bound’ is the first truly all killer, no filler song. The jumpy guitars cut through like a surgical razor. Diego Rapacchietti’s drums add a huge, cavernous sense of space, and this is reinforced by the sheer definition of his metallic cymbal tapping during the song’s quieter moments. The memorable and maniacal steamrolling flow of instrumental synergy on the song ‘Symmetry’ harkens back to a Coroner classic like ‘Internal Conflicts’, and Symmetry features even more guitar heroics from Vetterli played over a rather beautiful backing progression. ‘The Law’ is a journey of a song that opens to mystical and dissonant guitars and drums before a triplet note chugging main riff perforates the progression. The second half of the song sees the band speedily and rather epicly ricocheting through many muscular and intense moments while Broder barks his mantra: “I am, I am the law!”.
The latter songs of the album rarely let up in terms of consistently high quality. The finale: ‘Prolonging’ serves simply as an instrumental jam to bring the album to a sense of finality and it does this well to some degree, although I would have preferred some serious fireworks to really close the album out. I mentioned my initial concerns with the production earlier in the review, and I can say now with certainty that the production on this album is excellent. Coroner have draped a modern sheen over the sound of Dissonance Theory, this is a dense, busy, and expensive sounding record, and they apply this palate whilst staying true to their extreme Thrash roots.
Now, do I think that this represents the sort of groundbreaking album that could challenge the notion of Thrash Metal songcraft in the modern era?… no. What this is, however, is a great album, easily one of the year’s best. Coroner has successfully emerged in 2025 with an album that sounds informed and suits the time of its release, and for a veteran band to achieve this after such a massive break is actually quite remarkable. Coroner never really received the international acclaim outside of Switzerland that they so desperately deserved but hopefully, a Coroner album released in the internet age will bag them a new generation of fans to relish not just this album but also the classics they unleashed pre hiatus.
