CORONER · Punishment for Decadence | BLACK LP

180g black vinyl with 425gsm heavy cardboard cover with 6mm spine, lyric sheet, 4 page A4 booklet, 12 page 12" size booklet, A5 photo card, A4 insert, A1 double sided poster and album cover poster (580x580mm). Limited to 500 copies.

Background information about 'Punishment for Decadence'

Some records just refuse to age, and "Punishment for Decadence" is one of them. When Coroner dropped this beast in 1988, the Swiss trio had already proven with their debut that they could outplay just about anyone in thrash, but this time they stopped flexing for the sake of flexing and started writing actual songs. And what songs they are. Produced by Guy Bidmead at Sky Trak Studio in Berlin, the whole thing feels tighter, deeper, more mature — a band that realized the riff is the point, not just the technique behind it.

The centerpiece, without question, is "Masked Jackal", a track that still sends a room into a frenzy three and a half decades later. It's the one they shot a video for, the one MTV couldn't ignore, and frankly the one that sums up everything great about this album: razor-sharp riffing, Ron Royce's snarling basslines and vocals, and Marquis Marky's machine-like drumming all locked into something that grooves as hard as it shreds. Then there's the closing "Purple Haze" — a Hendrix cover that Coroner made entirely their own, twisting a psych-rock classic into their own avantgarde metal language.

There's a great story behind the cover, too. Marky climbed a ladder in the middle of the night in Zürich to photograph Rodin's painting "Porte de L'enfer" for the artwork, but the label thought it wasn't metal enough, so the second pressing got that iconic skeleton with the violin instead. It's the kind of detail that makes you appreciate how much personality this band had. This High Roller reissue has been remastered and restored by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony, cut by SST Germany on Neumann machines — the ultimate audiophile edition of an eternal classic.

For fans of:
Celtic Frost, Voivod, Mekong Delta, Watchtower, Anacrusis

Other Versions

BLACK LP · Sold out CD · 10,99 € ICEBERG BLEND LP · 34,99 €

Track listing

1. Intro
2. Absorbed
3. Masked Jackal
4. Arc-Lite
5. Skeleton On Your Shoulder
6. Sudden Fall
7. Shadow of a Lost Dream
8. The New Breed
9. Voyage to Eternity
10. Purple Haze

Manufacturer: High Roller Records, Bertolt-Brecht-Str. 1a, 08412 Werdau, Germany, Contact: www.hrrecords.de