R.I.P.

Nothing compares to this, think of the most brutal albums of thrashing terror: "Darkness Descends", "Spectrum of Death", "Eternal Devastation", "Reign in Blood" None of these even brush a whisker on this album and even though all those albums are pretty dear to me and are definitely classic thrash albums, the ridiculous amount of unrestricted, talent unleashed on R.I.P simply cannot be denied or succeeded.

Coroner's R.I.P is not thrash in the most typical sense. In fact, the songs on this album are at their least interesting when they resort to playing more standard thrash metal riffs which don't appear too often. Any ordinary riff that appears is quickly replaced with the Veterelli's mind blowing rhythm guitar which is riddled with tasteful licks. For example, well actually this is not a good example of an average riff but for the sake of argument, the first song "Reborn through Hate" starts slowly with a "standard riff" (which is actually good) that transforms into a shockingly impressive and blazing neo classical frenzy of unparallelled and seemingly endless riffs. I mean how do you even describe this fiesta of excellence. Listen to "When Angels Die", the remarkable twisting and winding riffs here contain more notes than most thrash albums have. The instrumental track, "Nosferatu" is a three and half minute display emotional and unrealistic talent, If the soloing towards the end doesn't make you cry you are a fucking pussy.

The whole band (when I say whole i mean just 3 fucking guys) seem to all be geniuses. The drummer is only trying to add as much to the structure of the songs as possible and not just play really fast. There is so much going on in each song that it's practically impossible to do anything else other than sit in your chair and experience multiple aural orgasms over and over. Bassist and vocalist Ron is exceptional and most of the time his skills on bass are clear, not to mention his bizarre and intriguing vocals. Now I don't know what I'm going to try and complain about here, I guess there is some small amount of repetition in some of the solos, but in amongst all the hyper activity you won't even notice and it just doesn't matter really, the band is hardly out of ideas. Reviewing this album I was undecided on whether I would give it ten out of ten, because it is not entirely consistent and some songs outshine others ever so slightly. What you have to remember is the lesser impressive songs in relation to this album alone would be considered absolute masterpieces on any other thrash album, so what does that make the most impressive songs on this album...

The entire thrash scene has been outplayed by this album and the two albums that would follow. I can't even see a tribute album containing marginally, similar qualities ever being released. They are not just some of the greatest thrash metal albums, but also musically genius pieces of work that are severely overlooked, I mean recently this stuff has been getting some recognition, but no large amount of praise would be too much for Coroner's early works. One can only sit back and laugh at the current, crowded scene of Sepultura / Kreator / Slayer, worshiping, retro, thrash clones who's only goal is to recycle old riffs and bark about thrashing, posers and beer. Sorry kids, but Tankard is the only band where the beer drinking novelty will probably never wear off.