Playful, yet full of raw power; delicate and brutal at the same time; driving rhythms coupled with dizzying guitar solos ... Coroner is all this and more. Is it thrash metal? Is it speed metal? Is it technical death metal? This Swiss band cannot be pigeonholed. It is unique ... even after 30 years on the go. The early 1980s was a tumultuous time in Zurich. This usually oh-so-quiet city on the River Limmat was seething with unrest. It was a time of protest marches and riots. Young people were fighting for the freedom and space to express themselves. The atmosphere was highly charged. It was against this backdrop that two bands emerged from the small Zurich metal scene determined to conquer the world: Coroner and Celtic Frost. They were hungry for new, fresh, original music, and decided to make it themselves. Back then, the Coroner line-up was Tommy Vetterli aka Tommy T. Baron (guitar), Marky Edelmann aka Marquis Marky (drums), and Ron Broder aka Ron Royce (bass). The vocals on the band's first demo tape (Death Cult) were provided by Tom G. Warrior of Celtic Frost. This was before Ron became the band's vocalist. Death Cult got Coroner a record deal with the German label Noise Records, which was at the time a force to be reckoned with when it came to discovering exciting new metal bands. The five studio albums Coroner made with Noise Records proved that it was so much more than a run-of-the-mill thrash metal band: R.I.P (1987) was unpolished high-speed metal, Punishment for Decadence (1988) was musically complex, No More Color (1989) and Mental Vortex (1991) demonstrated the band's technically maturity, while Grin (1993) marked a shift towards a more straightforward sound with drive. Coroner also proved their mettle on stage with tours of Europe and the USA.