«Mental Vortex» is Coroner’s fourth album, released on 12 August 1991 by Noise. It was recorded from April to June 1991 at Sky Trak Studio in Berlin with producer Tom Morris. The line-up is Ron Broder, known as Ron Royce, on vocals and bass, Tommy Vetterli, or Tommy T. Baron, on guitar, and Marky Edelmann, as Marquis Marky, on drums.
“`Country: Switzerland
Genre: Thrash Metal
For fans of: Voivod, Watchtower, Mekong Delta
The album continues the experimental path opened by «No More Color», mixing thrash with progressive, jazz fusion and avant-garde elements.
Raw speed and aggression give way to a more technical and unusual way of writing, with tempo changes, atmosphere and more complex structures.
«Divine Step (Conspectu Mortis)», «Son of Lilith» and «Metamorphosis» stand out. The record closes with a cover of the Beatles’ «I Want You (She’s So Heavy)».
The songs hide audio samples: the intro of «Divine Step» comes from the film «Re-Animator», the end of «Semtex Revolution» from a news bulletin on the Kennedy assassination and «About Life» from «Hellraiser II».
Coroner formed in Zurich in 1983 and started out as a crew working behind the scenes for Celtic Frost before becoming a band in their own right. «Mental Vortex» reached number 62 in the Swiss charts in 2026, decades after it first came out.
The cover is a manipulated photograph of Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates from the 1960 film «Psycho». The album stayed out of print for years and was reissued remastered in 2018 by Noise and BMG. It is considered one of the most influential examples of technical thrash metal.
See also: Anthrax’s «Spreading the Disease», another record from the same year that pushed thrash somewhere less obvious.
