CORONER brought their "Dissonance Over The West" tour to Los Angeles on February 6, the third show on the 15-date West Coast run that has seen the Swiss technical thrash veterans deliver increasingly commanding performances with each successive date. Following strong showings in Las Vegas and San Diego, the Los Angeles date represented the tour's biggest market yet, and CORONER rose to the occasion.
Los Angeles holds special significance for thrash metal — the city's clubs and venues were crucibles for the genre's development in the 1980s, hosting early performances by METALLICA, SLAYER, and countless others who would shape heavy music's future. For CORONER, a band that always operated slightly outside the mainstream thrash narrative due to their Swiss origins and progressive tendencies, playing LA carries the weight of performing in a city that birthed much of the music that inspired them.
The setlist balanced material from "Dissonance Theory" with deep cuts from CORONER's celebrated catalog — albums like "R.I.P.," "Punishment for Decadence," "No More Color," "Mental Vortex," and "Grin" that stand as some of the most technically accomplished records in thrash metal history. Ron Royce's guitar work was characteristically precise, delivering complex arrangements with the kind of surgical accuracy that has become the band's calling card.
HEATHEN opened with raw Bay Area thrash energy, providing an ideal contrast to CORONER's more cerebral approach. The pairing of these two bands — one representing California's visceral thrash tradition, the other embodying European technical refinement — has proven to be one of the strongest support pairings of the current touring cycle.
The tour continues to Pomona on February 7, then San Jose on February 9 and Berkeley on February 10, before heading north to Portland and the Pacific Northwest leg that will carry the run into Canada.