CORONER fueron pioneros en muchos aspectos, pero sobre todo por ser quizá el primer grupo que desde su comienzo hizo Thrash técnico y también por pertenecer a la avanzadilla de bandas que llegaron desde Suiza, junto a nombres como HELLHAMMER y CELTIC FROST. Tras cinco álbumes impecables y una profunda evolución musical el grupo se disolvió, pero en el 2010 decidieron reunirse con la intención de participar en algunos festivales, cita que poco a poco ha ido creciendo a medida que aumentaba la demanda por parte de los fans para volver a verlos en directo. A finales del pasado mes de junio el batería Markus Edelmann (más conocido como Marquis Marky, su sobrenombre en CORONER) tuvo la amabilidad de mantener conmigo una charla telefónica de unos cuarenta minutos cuyo contenido reproduzco a continuación. La transcribo en inglés porque así es como tuvo lugar y porque, aun sin ser el idioma nativo de ninguno de los dos, creo que siempre se pierden matices en la traducción.
Hi, Marky! Good afternoon and thanks a lot for running this interview. How you doing?
Hi Pedro! Fine, thank you.
OK, let's go.
Absolutely.
I think only four reunion shows were scheduled, but you finally made it up to six, is that right?
I think only four reunion shows were scheduled, but you finally made it up to six, is that right?
Oh, that’s a good question. Maybe... six, yeah. I think so, haha! I'm not sure, maybe six or seven or five, I don't know, hahaha!
Do you have plans for some more, or offers you’re thinking to consider?
Yes, we'd love to play more, it completely depends if we have offers. If anyone calls us and wants us to play somewhere then we're gonna play more shows. The only thing is sometimes it's just quite expensive for us if we go to play one show, for instance as we played at the Maryland Death Fest, where there is like all in all eight people travelling to the United States and staying there for four days. All this is very expensive, and it's actually the same expenses you have as if you do a whole tour but it's just for one show. So that's maybe sometimes a little bit of problem, otherwise we would play much more shows, maybe also in South America and other countries a bit more far away. Yes, basically we'd definitely love to play more shows, now we're ready to play [As stated in coroner-reunion.com, they've scheduled eight concerts, the last one due to take place in Miami next 2012].
How are those reunion concerts going until now?
Very well! Of course, we were kind of nervous, especially myself, I hadn't played drums for quite a long time, about fifteen years, and...
Yes, that was going to be my next question, if it is true that you hadn’t played drums in a fifteen years time…
Haha! Yes, it is, and that’s also the second thing, that CORONER's music, as you know, is quite complicated music and it was not very easy to put that back together after such a long time. So we were kind of nervous, especially the last two shows, especially the last one at Hellfest, it was about 30.000 people and it's totally crazy for me to think about so many people, and most of them were filming while they watched the concert and they'd put it on the world wide web immediately after the show, so that kind of thing made us a bit nervous, but everything turned out great as well as at the MDF show in Baltimore, as well as the first show of all the shows in Lausanne, Switzerland. Everything went great so far, and now I'm starting to really look forward for the next shows in summer, now I'm totally relaxed, and now it's just when the fun part starts.
When will be the next show?
The next show is gonna be in Switzerland, in Thun, that's supposed to be in the thirtieth of July, so it's in about one month from now.
Now here’s a tough one: do you think that the current tendency for reunions made by old metal bands has anything to do with some kind of midlife crisis? Is it nostalgia, is it for the money?
Haha! I don't know if I'm already in the midlife crisis, but, yes, there are several reasons. Especially in our case it took quite a long time until we decided to do that. Tommy called me maybe to say the last four or five years, telling me “Hey, buddy, there's possibilities to play big festivals, you wanna do that?” For me there was no way to do it, because I just couldn't think about playing drums again and especially the CORONER stuff, and also I didn't wanna fuck up our name, the legacy and everything, we were really concerned about that. So it took really a long long time, a lot of talking. And on the other hand, I see there is a lot of youtube little movies, video clips, from old concerts and there are a lot of comments from people, they wanted to see us so bad, and it made me feel like “Wow, it's really cool there's still people out there that remember CORONER and they want to see us play”. So, there's young young guys playing CORONER's cover versions with their bands or their instrument, and so that made us also be sure that there's people out there they would really, really, really love to see us again. So, that was of course the main reason, you know, to finally meet up with our fans that still are there. And… of course, you mentioned the money, the money is definitely... We really get paid very well for these shows, but... on the other hand, we never got paid well in the past, we played ten years for nothing. So it's OK, I feel good to get a little bit of money for these shows, it's cool. Besides that, now we were rehearsing for about nine months to play these few shows, so if you look at it from this point it's ok that we get more money than we got in the old days.
No. I personally do not. I heard that Tommy was actually checking out the possibilities for a record company if they would be interested in CORONER, but I didn't do anything about that, it just came on by coincidence. So for me personally I think it's not possible, because we just don't have... at least I don't have the time to do a proper album, because I have a family by now, I have a little girl, and I have a job, I go to work four days a week... To make a proper album you need a lot of time and already when I was just doing music it took us about one year or one and a half years to write an album until it was finished. So today, these days, it would take us probably, I don't know... three years or something? And then it has to be at least the level that we used to have before we stopped the band, if not better, so that's gonna be really tough. So for my personal side I don't think we're gonna do another record.
Is Ron maybe planning to release some of the tracks he’s been doing these past years?
I don't know, I have no idea, I don't know how many tracks he actually did, I have no idea, I can't answer this question.
Now let’s talk about your post-Coroner projects, SPU (SUPREME PSYCHEDELIC UNDERGROUND) and KNALLKIDS: are they completely put to rest or do you ever work on them or have plans to?
KNALLKIDS! Exactly, that's also over. My partner from KNALLKIDS is doing a solo thing and he's very successful, he's doing a great job, he's touring a lot in Europe, and it's fantastic, it's his time, he's a young guy, he's about twenty years younger than I am... no, fifteen years younger than I am. It's his time now, it's really cool. But for me... it was a great time doing these electronic things, this electronic music, but after a while I also felt it's strange doing live acts with big laptops. So for me it's good to be back in the hard, brutal music and playing for real, playing drums, playing handmade music, playing real live shows, and right now I'm totally focusing on this, as well as I was focusing on the electronic thing then. Right now I'm totally into the being back and fresh in Death Metal.
Can you tell me about the musical activities by the other members since Coroner split?
Well, Ron, like you mentioned before, he told me once that he was working on a track, at least one track, I don't know if he ever went over this one track or if he did more, other music or more tracks, I have no idea. I know Tommy was doing a lot of things, he'd be joining this Swiss artist called STEPHAN EICHER, he's very very big in Switzerland and even bigger in France, they play big big shows. He was touring with STEPHAN EICHER for a while. That was really like a big time thing, very very big shows, then later he joined a band called... I'm not sure... called ELEMENT OF CRIME? [Yes, they're a German rock band.] I'm not sure about that, but I'm absolutely sure he was with KREATOR for about two years or something, playing guitar for them. I think they also recorded one of their records with Tommy [Actually he stayed in the band from 1996 to 2001 and recorded with them the albums "Outcast" and "Endorama"]. And afterwards... oh yeah! Right after CORONER he was in a band called CLOCKWORK. They also put out one Demo-CD. And right now he plays with his wife in the same band, they're called 69 CHAMBERS, and they also do quite a lot live shows all over. He's definitely the most music-wise, the most active of the CORONER guys. And besides that he has his own recording studio, so he's around music all the time.
Are you still into the Techno scene, I mean as a fan?
Yeah! I still like the music a lot, even though I think there was not a lot of changes going on the last four or five years. If sometime we turned back the clock it sounds for me still the same as it sounded four or five years ago. So I was actually expecting more developments, more new styles, so that's a little bit disappointing. Still I like a lot of music, but I don't go out so much anymore as I did. I overdid a little bit for a few years, I went probably every weekend for four or five years, I went out every weekend from Friday to Monday morning. And that's not for me now, haha. So I don't go out much, but I like the music a lot, absolutely, yes.
Let’s go back to CORONER: are you aware that the band followed an evolution totally opposite to most Thrash bands in the 80s? I mean, they all started in a more simple way of creating music and then evolved into a more complex and technical one, but you did exactly the contrary. I think maybe CORONER is the one and only case.
(He laughs quite a few times) You're very very right with what you're saying. In one side it's very right, in the other side it's not as easy as it sounds. You're right... If you'll just listen to the music it's much more complicated, as you mentioned, in the beginning, in “R.I.P.”. But what we actually did was we tried more and more to get at the deep of the real essence, the core of what we had in mind, so we had to use a more complicated way to express the same as we expressed later with a more compact style. So, that's the same lyric-wise: you can tell a story with millions of words but if you're really good you can tell a story with just a few words and you know exactly what it's all about, the total perfect impression. So that was actually our main goal, to have the essence, to have the real things, exactly the important things, and just drop everything that was not important to make this specific.
I’m not saying “Grin” is not complex, because it is in both rhythm and structure, I was talking about the technicality of the riffs, the high technical level. And that’s what changed at the end of your past career.
Combined with our experience playing live, of course. With the more live shows we played we experienced that it was sometimes, especially as a trio, almost impossible to recreate the songs and how they sounded on the record, recreate them on stage. Sometimes it was just too much, there was people just standing there being impressed, like “Wow! Look what they're playing, this is crazy”, but we always preferred having movement in the crowd, having an interaction between the band and the audience, and that definitely did not happen. It was more like we did some artistic program, joggling, haha, and we had crowds viewing this, but there was no real interaction between crowd and band or not so much. So the more we played live shows, the more we toured, we found it was fun for us to play but we also wanted to enjoy a live concert and not just going off stage and being almost dead because we played so much complicated stuff. As well as we found it was much more fun as well for the crowd, and that was another point why our music more and more changed. So I think it's a combination of the first and this one. That's how it led us from “R.I.P.” to CORONER like the very last album we did.
I think “Mental Vortex” showed a perfect match between progressiveness and simplicity, I think in some way it was the highlight in your creative career. What do you think?
Yeah, I got this question many times, not specifically on “Mental Vortex” but the question “What is your favorite album as one of the members of the band, what do you think is the peak?”...
No, I’m not asking what your favorite record is, just if you think “Mental Vortex” stands out as probably a perfectly balanced album compared to the other ones and your change in style.
OK, but it' also hard for me to say. I know your question, but it's hard to say, because it's not every song. I think “Divine step” is one of the really best songs we did, for me personally I like that song a lot, and I like to still play it live. This song came out really really good, and there's other songs I think they could have been better. And if I go to “Grin” there are other songs on this album as well that I think “Ah, that was really the peak we reached for the perfect mix”, that's what we always wanted. But it's never the whole album, it's always a few songs.
What I meant is it was maybe the most well-balanced, the most complete of your albums due to that point of equilibrium.
I think it worked perfectly, yes, but I also think in general there is a split between our fans, between people who are really into the Thrash Metal kind of the first two albums, and then “No More Color” is already a bit problem for them, and then from “Mental Vortex” they don't really dig the music anymore because it’s too far away from what we did in the beginning, which I don't think. I think you still can hear CORONER in all the albums, but of course there is a change, yeah, absolutely, but if you really like CORONER you should be aware of this. We were never a band that got stuck with one thing, we were interested in so many different music styles, each single member was listening to complete different music all the time, so there was no boundary for us actually. There were maybe so many boundaries in the end that we really had to stop the band because we felt we couldn’t really go as far as we wanted to, so we felt like completely a different band as we started. So that was one of the main reasons we actually stopped CORONER, because everybody wanted to be free to create something new, which Tommy immediately did with CLOCKWORK, and for me it ended up in even that complete different world of electronic music. It took a while, but now CORONER is back here, so for me it's like everything is possible, in every album everything was possible as far as we could go at that time.
Do you know any more Swiss Metal bands from the 80s, apart from, of course, HELLHAMMER and CELTIC FROST?
Yes, there was a few bands, there was a band called EXCRUCIATION, there was a band called LUNACY, I think they're even still around if I am right, and then there was MESSIAH, and... Well, there was a band called DRIFTER... I'm sure I forget plenty of them, I'm sure I don't remember a few bands right now, I mean... fuck! I forgot bla bla bla, you know... But there were quite a lot of bands. We were really close friends with definitely the guys from LUNACY and the guys from EXCRUCIATION. Those were the bands we were hanging around the most besides CELTIC FROST.
Do you happen to know a band named APOCALYPSE from Geneva? They released two albums, “Apocalypse” in 1988 and “Faithless” in 1993.
Oh, yeah, of course, yes, absolutely, from the west, absolutely, yes, yes.
Whose idea was the name Coroner as a name for the band?
That goes back, far back, I probably have to explain there was a CORONER existing between 81 and 83, with a complete different lineup, and there was one guitar player of the original lineup, the “pre-CORONER” lineup, Oliver Amberg, and he was later joining CELTIC FROST at the time they were recording “Cold Lake”. This guy we used to play together with in the old lineup, but the music was more some sort of like TWISTED SISTER, kind of Rock Metal thing, far away from being Thrash Metal. Actually the guy who came up with the name was the bass player at that time with the old lineup, Phil Puzctai. It was Phil Puzctai's idea, who was the bass player of the old lineup.
Do you stilll earn money from the CORONER albums, do they still sell well? Are they selling better now that you’re active again and doing live shows?
Actually they're not being pressed anymore, so basically you cannot buy them in shops anymore. I tried myself, because I don't even have all the records myself, so I went to record stores and I wanted to buy one of our cds and they're like “Haha!”, you know. From years ago you cannot order them anymore, they're out of stock.
Will there be any reissue of your records?
We're probably gonna reissue the albums, we're right now checking who's actually got the rights, I think it's Universal who has the rights now, because Noise Records, our record company that bought all the CORONER records, they collapsed, they’re not existing anymore, and all the rights I think passed on to Universal by now, as far as I know. So we will see what we're gonna do. We actually also plan doing some sort of DVD, kind of a box or something, because we have plenty of old recordings we did during tours in the United States and all over Europe, maybe putting some of the clips from old shows combined with the clips from now, from these few shows we're playing right now. And maybe then there's also gonna be some sort of an audio compilation from the old albums, something like that, maybe, I don't know yet.
What are your current jobs apart from music?
Like I mentioned before, Tommy has his own recording studio, it's called New Sound, it's near Zurich, and he's producing and recording, he's also a recording engineer. And Ron he's working for like a security system company, they're doing security locks, and I myself used to work quite a long time ago in a museum of contemporary art and now I'm taking care about an art collection of a famous publisher, he collects contemporary art and I and a friend of mine are taking care about this.
Is it true that “Punishment For Decadence” was reissued without your consent?
No, what happened was that the cover, the record sleeve, originally was totally different, I don't know which one you know, you probably know the one where you see like a grim reaper playing a kind of violin made of bones. But originally it was a completely different cover, it was from “The Gates of Hell”, by Auguste Rodin, the famous French sculptor. And it's very big, it's a big gate, it's in the art museum here in Zurich [The Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft (or The Kunsthaus Zürich); it's a copy, the original is in the Rodin Museum of Paris], it's next to the main entrance, you can see that and it shows like people going down to Hell, and it's very beautiful. It has a lot of small figures, I did a photo of a small part of this whole gate and this photo is the original cover, and what you see now on the front cover was actually supposed to be a fold-out cover, like a double LP so you could fold it and unfold it and then in the middle there would be this grim reaper. But after the first issued edition they suddenly thought it was not commercial enough, it was not Metal style enough, so they just changed the cover without asking us, and it was like “What!!”, suddenly when I saw this record it was like “Hey, what the hell is going on”. And they were like “Yeah, you know, this is not selling well with the old cover”, which was complete bullshit, because the old cover is really really beautiful, and I'm glad I still have an original copy here. That were the kind of things that they did, they always did things without asking the bands, and that's really fucked up.
Yes, I tried a few years ago to buy “Punishment For Decadence”, which was the only CORONER album that I don’t have in vinyl, and not only it was really hard to find but also when I did it was in CD and it had of course the reissue cover with the grim reaper on it.
Right, right... I think the other one is almost impossible to find. If you google it you can see how it looks, you can go and see the pictures, you can see how the original cover looked like. You have to check it out, I wonder if you agree with me, I like much more the original one. And anyway I was pissed because they just changed it without asking.
Are you into the underground metal scene today?
Not really. Like I said, I still love the music but... There is one band I really, actually two, I really like right now a lot. The one I’ve known for a little bit longer that's GOATSNAKE and the other one is ELECTRIC WIZARD, I really like these two bands, and it's... I really like Doom or Stoner Doom bands, really deep heavy music, that's what I'm totally into. I always liked it but now I'm into it much more than ever before, because I used to be quite a lot into BLACK SABBATH way back and these bands they're like the consequence, they go on with that style, and it's great they're around. That's pretty much all. But they're also not really young bands, I think ELECTRIC WIZARD were already around in the late eighties, they first put out some Demo tapes, and as well as GOATSNAKE, they've also been around for quite a long time [According to Metal Archives, GOATSNAKE formed in 1996 and ELECTRIC WIZARD in 1993]. I don't know a lot about bands of today, to be honest. I saw some at the festivals but I don't even recall their names because there was just too many, but I see there is a lot going on, that's all I can say, it's great, it's fantastic. At the Maryland Death Fest it was crazy, and it was really a Death Metal festival, Grindcore and really like the real underground and it was so great to see that it's still going on a lot, it's fantastic. As the Hellfest, only it was a little bit more commercial, of course, with bands like SCORPIONS and so, but still it's going on and it's going on well, it's great.
Can you give me your opinion about the so-called Thrash Metal revival?
I think it's cool, because then it's something that's not gonna die, and it's also a proof that there was something being done right at that time. Sometimes it can happen that you do music that no one wants to listen anymore for forever. So if something's gonna be reissued and if there's young people going like “Yeah! That was actually cool”, then it's a great compliment for the bands that started that. And I think it’s cool, yeah, it's fantastic.
How do you see yourselves as an influential band in today’s technical or progressive Metal?
Oh, wow... Well, it's always hard to say if you go from your style, “Well, I'm sure I was a big influence to all these guys”. I don't know, it's like... Maybe for some of them it’s that way, I don't know, it would be great if it's like that, I would be much honored.
I think you liked CELTIC FROST’s reunion album “Monotheist”, is that right?
Yes, absolutely, I think they did a very good job. I was curious, because it's a very high risk operation to do an album after such a long time, with all those high expectations. I think they created a very nice album and they also did well at how they appeared, the visual thing was also very good. It's a shame they stopped in such a short time after they worked so many years on this album, it's too bad.
And what do you think about TRIPTYKON?
Now with TRIPTYKON I think it's cool, they're doing well, and I'm looking forward they're also gonna play at the Bloodstock again [Bloodstock Open Air, UK, Aug.12.2011]. Unfortunately at Hellfest we played exactly at the same time and I couldn't see them live, so I'm looking forward to Bloodstock then.
Do you know any Spanish Thrash band, past or present?
No, not many. I don't know if BARÓN ROJO are still around, haha!
Yes, they’re still around.
They are! They're still around?
Yes, indeed. But they’ve never been a Thrash band, they were always a Heavy Metal band.
Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I remember they put out an album that you could either buy in English or in Spanish, that was really really cool.
Yes, that was “Volumen Brutal”.
Exactly, yes, with the fist coming through the cover, yes. And there was this song, I think it was “Dinero, dinero” or something like that, I'm not sure if it was on this one.
No, that track was from a band called OBÚS.
Oh, yeah! Exactly! yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, absolutely... But now today I don't have really a clue as far as I know. Is there a big Metal scene in Spain?
Yes, there’s a big and growing scene, of course nowadays every band sings in English. But yes, there`s a strong scene.
Good, very good, fantastic. Is there a center in Spain, like a main city that is somewhere you can say is really the center for that kind of music in Spain? Like, for instance, Tampa in Florida was kind of the center for Death Metal in the United States, is it Barcelona or Madrid or is it like all over?
It’s more like all over the country today. In the 80s it was mostly the big cities because it was there where the music industry was, but that has changed a lot today.
OK, I see. And, sorry I forgot before: (---) one band I know from Barcelona and that’s LAS FURIAS, they play some kind of Garage Punk and they're an all girl band. The bass player is actually the wife of Techno legend and producer Cristian Vogel (SUPER COLLIDER), he was the one founding Sleep Debt Records and released my record with KNALLKIDS “Baked Boy Scouts”.
Well, I think that was all I had to ask you. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you.
OK, that's cool, that was very good to hear.
If there is any other thing that you’re willing to say, now it’s your time.
OK. I really hope that there's gonna be a promoter that brings for at least one show to Spain. It's much cheaper to go there than flying over to the United States, so it should be possible for us to do that show. And I hope I see you then in this occasion, if it happens at all.
Just let me say this has been my first phone interview and you’ve been really an easy one to talk to and a great help in this special time for me.
OK, I just want to say you did a great job. It didn't appear at all it was the first time for you to do this, and it was very very nice talking to you.
Thanks a lot, it was great for me too.
OK, good. All my pleasure. Thank you very much, I wish you a nice evening.
Same for you, and thanks again for your time and your kindness. Goodnight!
Goodnight!
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