Coroner - Grin

And now my age and maturity begin to show, Grin being the lost Coroner album for me until a couple of months ago. When this came out, I wouldn't even give this a change, feeling that along with Kreator and Renewal, that my favorite thrash bands of old had closed shop and gone industrial. In what must only be proof that this a album was years ahead of it's time (at least for me), it's my favorite Coroner record in my recent "rediscovery" of the band. Part of this must be due to the newness and unfamiliarity since I hadn't heard this or the Eponymous "greatest hits" album, but I attribute most of my feeling to the overall mood of the album, dark, midpaced and completely sinister. Coroner here have either forgotten, forsaken or built on their early roots here, depending on who you ask. Most songs are based here on the band's new desire to slow things down and work with atmosphere, Marquis Marky only playing the essentials here, which really allows Baron's fluid guitar work to shine. Yeah, there's experimental moments, like, an hour of them, but it fits, and the album works as something completely different than what they had done before, yet a logical progression from Mental Vortex. At any rate, Grin stands for now as a very worthy final long player for a band that should and hopefully will live in infamy as one of the great metal bands.