Hard N' Heavy Magazine

Coroner:
No Future!

January 1996

by Fred Burlet

The year 1995 brougth its share of bad news: Suicidal is over, Kyuss is over, Coroner is over. Little, but appreciable, consolation at the beginning of this year: Coroner was giving a few farewell shows for their French audience. Always as majestic as usual on stage, the trio said goodbye with a lot of class.

After ten years of close collaboration, the shy Ron Royce (bass/vocals), the cheerful Tommy Baron (guitar) and the eloquent Marquis Marky (drums) indeed chose to follow their own path from now on. It was with a lot of emotion, let's not be ashamed to say so, that Hard N' Heavy went to meet them for the last time...

How long hadn't you been playing together now?

Marquis: Our last show before this French tour was in Switzerland, in Zurich, and it was way back in September '94...

Do you enjoy getting back together, even if it's just for a very short time?

Marquis: Of course! It's a real pleasure for us to play in France, where the public is always there and seems to really understand our music.

Tommy: Besides, we don't get any more pressure now, so we can really take the time to appreciate what we're doing. I'd even say that we're feeling much better together now than we did a year ago. We are here because we really feel like it as, the last times, all the problems we had almost killed our friendship. In one word: we're having a hell of a time now!

Is this ultimate farewell tour performed in France only or will you quickly go to other European countries as well?

Marquis: For now, we only plan on going to France, but we're ready to give a few shows in Spain, Germany or Austria if we can find interested promoters. It's mostly a question of time -- it would make no sense if we gave our last show in Germany in six months from now! So, for the time being, we don't exactly know when we'll perform our last show yet. Maybe it will just be the last French date, we'll see!

The reasons for the break-up

You seem to be very disappointed by the other surrounding countries. You must have had some success in Germany though, especially since your ex-label, Noise, is German.

Tommy: Oh, Germany has always been a difficult place for us. The German have their own national bands to start with, and Coroner's music may have been just a little too sophisticated for their taste! And let's not speak about the UK, the other main country for European music... We practically never played there! We should have had a UK tour for our second album, but I ended up in jail when crossing the border so we had to cancel. It's too bad because, at this time, we used to have excellent critics in the British press and we could have gone further from there.

Didn't you label try to push you a little bit after that?

Tommy: The multiple and never-ending problems we've had with Noise are the main reasons for our break-up. Every time that we had anything to do with these people, it turned out to be a catastrophe. It's really a shitty company -- every year, they used to completely change their plans and philosophy about us, they never knew how to work seriously with us.

Does the compilation that was released a few months ago put an end to your contract?

Tommy: Absolutely. We yet had to make one more album for them but we didn't want to waste all our energy to compose a brand new album for them. So we got their consent for a compromise: a compilation, plus a few new and remixed songs.

All these problems with Noise can't possibly have destroyed the band alone?

Tommy: They finally used up all our energy. We even argued quite a few times because of that... But there is also the fact that we'd been playing together for ten years now and that we felt like doing something else. Perhaps we're getting too old for heavy metal, ha ha!

You just said that you really enjoyed playing together again, now that's it's too late... But is it really too late?

Marquis: It's definitely over regarding Coroner. We're not gonna announce our splitting up and make a happy come-back a year later like all these bands of wannabe's do... We don't exclude the possibility of working together again, or partially together, one of these days because we've known each others for so long that our musical paths might cross again, but surely not as Coroner.

Projects for the future

What do you plan on doing now?

Marquis: I have a job in a record store and I play in the studio once in a while...

Tommy: I for one hope to follow the upcoming Stephan Eicher tour... It's not my type of music but it's a cool job. But maybe his next album will be recorded with a classical orchestra, never know ! In that case, I'll do what I can and I'll try to release a solo album.

Ron: And, me, I'll be working in my father's store to survive and try to put my musical thoughts together with a new band, but nothing's sure for now -- I don't really know what I want yet.

In any ways, we -- all of us -- hope with all our hearts that we'll see you back around soon. The mourning of Coroner will be difficult to get over with, so it's up to you to make it easier for us by being even better within your future bands! Good luck...

Translated and reprinted without permission from the magazine Hard N' Heavy, January 1996.

Created and Maintained by Design Vortex

Coroner: No Future!

The reasons for the break-up

Projects for the future

Coroner:
No Future!