The story of one of the most talented power trios in metal begins with a band called Diamond. Before bassist Ron Royce (Ron Broder) and guitarist Tommy T. Baron (Tommy Vetterli) formed Coroner, they were playing in a traditional heavy rock band by the name of Diamond. After only about three gigs in total, Ron and Tommy left because they wanted to start their own band. “That’s why we began looking for a drummer,” explains the guitarist. “A friend of ours, a fellow musician, knew that Marky (Marquis Marky, real name Markus Edelmann) was looking for a guitarist and a bassist, so he introduced us.” So, Coroner as we know them today was born.
The first result of Tommy, Ron and Marky working together was the »Death Cult« demo, featuring “Spectators Of Sin”, “Spiral Dream”, “Aerial Combat” and “The Invincible”. “When I listen to it today, of course, I find it a bit funny at times,” laughs Tommy Vetterli. “But back then, we were still searching for our own sound, and we just composed freely, doing whatever we felt like and what gave us joy. It is what it is.“
Tom Fischer of Celtic Frost sings on three of the four songs, apart from the instrumental “Aerial Combat”. In addition to that, he had also written the lyrics for »Death Cult«. Tommy Vetterli: “We were just focusing on the music so far, not yet thinking about the lyrics. Normally, that's something the singer would do.”
250 copies of »Death Cult« were made, professionally duplicated. The demo did get a lot of coverage in metal magazines back at the time. “Yeah, we got really great reactions to our first release, everywhere in the fanzines,” says the guitarist, “for us, it was just really amazing that anyone even wrote about us at all.”‚
Soon after, in early 1987, Coroner inked a deal with Noise Records. However, Karl Walterbach did not sign the band on the strength of the »Death Cult« demo. Instead, they had mailed Walterbach a crude rehearsal room tape recorded on a ghetto blaster with bassist Ron taking over vocal duties for the first time.