CORONER Drummer: 'There Is Not Going To Be A New Album'

Rene Trujillo of ThrashHead.com recently conducted an interview with drummer Marquis Marky (a.k.a. Marky Edelmann) of the reunited Swiss thrash trio CORONER. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ThrashHead: When you guys decided to [reform], was it just simply because there seems to be a resurgence of thrash metal; of gettin' back to the basics of what made heavy metal great? Did you notice all of a sudden people were saying, "Hey, wait, we've been fed crap for ten, twelve years!" and now there is all of sudden a whole new school of musicians who are bringing this music which CORONER pioneered back onto the scene? Were you aware of that, did you think the time was right that a new generation understood the metal geniuses that you guys were?

Marky: To be honest, I was not really aware of it. What I did realize was that on YouTube, suddenly I saw there were young bands playing covers of CORONER, for instance, young guys who were probably not even born when we stopped the band. That was the first thing... I was, "Wow, man, that's so cool!" Or I [would] see some guys sitting at home and a CORONER song comes through their stereo and they play along with their guitar, bass or drums or whatever. I was like totally like, "Wow, that's so cool!" seeing people doing this...I mean it's not so easy to recreate these songs. That was the first thing. There's people caring about what we did in the past. To be honest, I really never listening to new bands or realizing that anything has changed or coming up. Maybe Tommy [Vetterli, guitar] much more, because Tommy owns a studio and is producing a lot, he is really listening to, and aware of, a lot of what's going on. Myself, not at all. Now what I see on these shows we've played so far, there was a lot of young bands playing, for instance at the Maryland Deathfest, there were a lot of bands, or during the several shows we've done recently, Italy, Greece or whatever...I see bands, you know, that I can really see sounds like old school...they're coming back to the essence. I can hear sometimes, definitely some CORONER in some of the other bands.

ThrashHead.com: What did you do in the interim before CORONER getting back together? Did you step away from music awhile?

Marky: Yes. First of all, I had to find a new job. (laughs) I suddenly realized that I had to earn some money to pay for my daily life, I had to say to myself, "You're not a musician anymore now. You have to find something else." I am a graphic designer and I went to an art school here in Zurich for five years, but I never really, except for the CORONER covers and some little other things, I never really did the job, so, first of all, I thought I would go back to this... but I've found out, it's like, I don't want to sit in front of the computer all day. Then I found, through the bass player of APOLLYON SUN, he brought me into like a gallery to work for artists to build up installations... contemporary art. And from there I went to a museum, a quite big museum here in Zurich, also contemporary art, and I was doing this for many years; I was helping creating and building the exhibitions, working with artists from all over the world, very famous artists, actually. It was fantastic for me to feel that I could do things, and so I was basically doing this and then I slowly started going back ...But, what I did was like electronic music, I was getting more into the electronic music scene, and there was a great club scene here in Zurich, a great, great underground scene with lots of new freaks doing strange things. The first project was called SPOON, you know, supreme psychedelic underground, it was named after a band in the '70s. I just liked the name so I just "stole" it. (Laughs) So we were four guys doing music using only PlayStation programs and we really fucked up the samples and stuff like that. So, that was the first...actually there is a record, a double LP that came out and then the second thing was called KNALLKIDS, "Knall" stands for "bang" in English. It was a duo and we did very sick kinda house music, really. You know...you might be shocked hearing the words "house music," but it's not like what you think probably. Anyway, so that was what I was doing. There was also a record that came out on Deck Records, thousand pieces or something like that were sold out, which was really cool for me, because I was like "OK, it's working in the scene as well." But then slowly, I heard Tommy was calling up, that we should try to play together again, then I slowly started to think about maybe about playing drums again...but that took another four years or something before I really decided to do it.

ThrashHead.com: Have you ever really thought now that you've got a few shows under your belt, and with people saying "CORONER's back!", about gettin' back into the studio [and recording a new album]?

Marky: (Pause) No, we don't. (Laughs) Because there are several reasons for this. The main problem is that we all have daily jobs. Ron [Royce; bass/vocals] is working for a company, I work for an art collector, I have a family and a little daughter, I am just not as free as I used to be, I can't just say, "Well, I am going to be in the studio for a month," I can't cancel my job for that, I can't be away from my family for that long. And Tommy, with his studio, is extremely busy all the time. I think it's just an illusion if we say we'll make a new album, because it would take such a long time. Of course, we can try to do that, but it would take maybe three or four years or something....that would be just strange, you know, to produce in this way, that you say, "Let's wait three weeks, and then we come together and put together the second song, drums," or something like that. For me, you have to be a band, you have to be somewhere else, away from everything, you have to be together for three weeks or whatever in one studio, just to get through one piece...that's the way we always did it... This is just not possible [to pull off right now]. I think it's OK how it is... Well, what we are probably going to do is one song or something, just one song to add to these few shows we do know or we just put on.... We're actually planning on putting out a DVD with all the cuts from the shows, traveling, what we're doing now and next year...combined with some old footage, like for instance, the first CORONER concert ever that we did in Zurich with CELTIC FROST and KREATOR and things like that. That's probably where the one new song or something like that will go.... I don't know. But, basically, to answer your question, there is not going to be a new album.

Read the entire interview from ThrashHead.com.