Coroner - Dissonance Theory ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
- Jay
- Feb 2
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 5
FOR FANS OF: VEKTOR, MESHUGGAH, VOIVOD
THRASH-O-METER
★★★★★★★☆☆☆ SONGWRITING
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ LONGEVITY
★★★★★★★★☆☆ THEMES
★★★★★★★★☆☆ PRODUCTION
★★★★★★★★☆☆ MUSICIANSHIP
★★★★★★★☆☆☆ CHARACTER
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ THRASHABILITY
The band took a sabbatical from the studio for 30 years - now the Swiss fellas are back!
'Dissonance Theory' continues the theme the band kept venturing into album by album before calling it quits back in 1993 with 'Grin' - which drifted to the far deep end. Their return is a lot more focused. It really feels almost like an event itself, and not just because of the stretch of time in between, but because how the album plays: sonically like a motherfncking mammoth!
Beyond technical thrash metal
As a firecracker of a start, Consequence, presents the modern Coroner in all its glory: intense and layered. From a machine-gun fire to ethereal horizons, and sewing it back together with a melodic trick; the motifs on the album pretty much all follow this formula with versioning.
Sacrifical Lamb picks it up more purposefully and contrasts the album's opening as an actual song that doesn't fly all over the place. There are few of those on the album and The Law jumps to mind as another more coherent song.
Overall, there's an ebb and flow to this thing and instead of having you making fists and rising up, it makes you sit deeper and frown in deep concentration - it can take a few listens to come to full bloom.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that!
Melodic touches cut through often enough to lift the already solid riffing a notch. Sh!t is so delicious occasionally that you plain float in the moment.
As much as the songs boast these riffs seemingly endlessly the songs do mutate; busy, shape-shifting mutants that they are, but that predictable motion eventually starts feeling like an inevitability, and that breeds blandness.
The songs seem to have their own premises but almost on cue the painterly width zooms back into a default state which feels excessively claustrophobic and monotonous.
Coroner has positioned itself as the brains of the bunch, as it often goes with describing progressive sh!t, and certain bands. My mind pulls towards Devin Townsend rather than the likes of Megadeth's 'Rust in Peace', or even Voivod kind of technical voyerism. 'Dissonance Theory' can be a thoroughly exhausting album - in both good way and bad.
Can't buy experience
Its in the name of the album: the core tension of how folks rationalize and position themselves in this great wide world of ours. The story of the album isn't so much a big grand anything, rather, its bits and pieces of the challenges we all face in one form or another.
The confrontation isn't societal or a straightforward call to climb the barricades as we've come to expect in thrash metal - its a great deal more subtle and perhaps even sorrowful in its acceptance of who (and how) we are to each others. You need life experience for this kind of sh!t.
These geezers really seem to want to shake you up until you are simply put: spent. Your bones are ground to dust, your thoughts mixed to mush, and your spirit is just about squeaking by.
Listening this sh!t my mind wanders to Metallica's album 'Death Magnetic': it has tons of killer moments but zero killer songs. Maybe this is what's waiting us when we ripen up, as also the good ol' Maiden at worst have had trouble to put a leash on anything since 'Dance of Death', and just keep galloping the 6 minute mark by default. 'Dissonance Theory' kinda is 47 minutes of admiring the same shade of taupe - in a way oddly soothing but it starts to feel like a uninterrupted fart sooner than later.
Good sh!t.
