SilentScream213 Celtic Frost were always a strange band as far as Metal went back in the day, but with Into the Pandemonium, they crafted the first album bizarre and eclectic enough to comfortably sit in the Avant-Garde Metal territory still 30 years after it’s creation. There are a couple songs on here with the same Blackened metal approach as Into Megatherion, but I personally wouldn’t call anything on here straight Thrash. There are also multiple interlude pieces, one of which being a sample driven drumbeat, scattered female vocals and symphonic elements, doomy gothic elements, and even poppy hooks, at least half of which are still growled.

Band leader Tom Warrior adopts a new style of singing here, something reminiscent of a whining, moaning cry. It’s very hammy but also sorrowful and pained, so YMMV on whether it’s good or not that this vocal style had a big impact on Gothic and Doom metal in the coming decade. The variety and filler make this indisputably weaker than the debut album, but it is still a unique treasure with a lot to offer.

voila_la_scorie Several years ago I was thinking about where my musical preferences would take me next, and as nothing presented itself, I began considering buying some of the old albums I once owned on cassette in CD version. While Quiet Riot, Ratt, and Motley Crue left me thinking, “Nah,” I soon found myself excitedly checking out more extreme metal bands on Amazon. Celtic Frost’s “Morbid Tales” and “To Mega Therion” were top contenders in the shopping cart.

I used to love going to the local record shop and seeking out new metal releases. Heavy metal was rather popular in my city and the store had created a heavy metal corner, and releases on Banzai Records were sure to hold material worth snatching up. Thus it was that I found the septagram with five swords and a skull adorning the cover of “Morbid Tales”, an album that was soon home with me and in my cassette stereo.

Man, what a sound! Celtic Frost crossed the speed of thrash (or at least speed metal) with slow, heavy riffs, and a vocal style that was even more gravelly than Lemmy or Chronos. Thomas Gabriel Warrior had a voice that, in its efforts to follow in the bellowing roar of Motorhead and Venom, came across even deeper, more ominous, more forbidding, and more sinister.

My favourite song back in the day was “Procreation of the Wicked” for its positively heavy and doomy, sluggish, anvil-pounding pace; however, recently I have been enjoying “Nocturnal Fear” for Warrior’s diaphragm-forced “Oogh!” which actually gets revived in the throat of Mikael Akerfeldt on some Opeth songs. It seems, though, that the song with the most influence here must be “Dethroned Emperor” as I recently discovered on YouTube cover versions by at least 46 different bands!

It’s interesting now to look back 30 years and more and see how Celtic Frost could be so influential in the forth-coming black metal and death metal scenes. The music is a bit loose, the vocals off due to their brutishness, the solos unvarying high-speed wha-wah pedal assaults, and the double bass kick drumming not used to full capacity. But the album is just so good in all its brutal honesty. Celtic Frost were going to make their statement in metal and by all things dark and barbarous, they did it!

siLLy puPPy What is one to make of a classic extreme metal band who started off with the name Hellhammer, released a couple EPs and then suddenly changed their name to CELTIC FROST? Well, that’s actually not that strange of a thing for a band to do. OK, how about such a band immediately picking up the burning metal torch from Venom and running with it to the point that all of their efforts split off into several 21st metal sub-genres even before such things were orthodox? Now that’s an unexpected feat of influence if i do say so myself as this band pretty much constructed a blueprint for all things thrash, black and doom. However, just as they were about to really take off into becoming extreme metal gods after their influential debut “To Mega Therion” they dived into the unknown, testing their limits and dipping into accessible glam metal territory. This WTF approach tested the patience of even the most eclectic extremists in the crowd and this OMG - WTF are you doing nonsense reached its apex on the 2002 album “Prototype” which lollygagged (me with a F@KK%N lolly-spOOn) into nu metal and trip hop dancing together but not in a good way :O BTW i like some nu metal and i adore well done trip hop, but these guys were fish out of water in these arenas.

So who coulda seen an album like MONOTHEIST coming? This is one of those moments that makes you realize that these guys were the real deal all along but somehow they got MAJORLY sidetracked thinking they could conquer musical horizons that were just too unrealistic. Let’s face it. LOTS of bands can be influential but not develop their influence into fruition. Well, F-I-N-A-L-L-Y on MONOTHEIST, the band formerly known as Hellhammer delivers the goods and what an absolutely brilliant album they have cast upon the physical world. This is the album they had in them from the beginning but for some reason their VHF and UHF were interfering with each other’s 80s reception and only in the digital age could they decipher their programmings and find the gumption to realize that their futile attempts to go where they didn’t belong were tantamount to Whitney Houston trying to cover a Slayer song. Nice job, guys! Even if it took you WAAAAY too long :)

MONOTHEIST is a beast of a metal album and while flying the flag of doom metal overall is a triumph of amalgamating various strains of metal (doom, gothic, black, death) with other underlying sounds such as dark ambient, symphonic classical and even progressive rock. This album was a long time coming and cements CELTIC FROST into the world of totally relevant metal acts of all time IMHO. All those visions of unifying different musical genres have been refined into the metal world here and taking the appropriate METAL visions and juxtaposing the so-called distinct “genres” of ideas into a seemingly and hauntingly realism. This album is dark, misanthropic and sombre while remaining heavy, atmospheric and appropriately apocalyptic. CELTIC FROST basically creates a summary of their entire career here without the moldy cheese and ferments their vision into a most fitting grand finale.

This album was a planned work in the making. It supposedly started as far back as the year 2000 and was seemingly planned as the magnum opus and i must say that it has achieved that status. This is one of those releases where i am truly in awe of its scope. Instead of merely sterilizing their ambitions, CELTIC FROST went for the jugular in appealing to the all of the dark arts embedded in music. I’m talking not just Black Sabbath and Venom but also goth rock acts like Bauhaus and Christian Death, hardcore punk bands like Discharge but also of early no wave influences such as Swans as heard on the female accompaniment of Lisa Middelhauve (of Xandria fame) on “Drown In Ashes.”

This album sounds like it was designed to be a classic. Every member on board wanted to create the impression that CELTIC FROST wasn’t just an influence but a relevant modern day entity and with that regard this band certainly achieved their goal. This album just flows perfectly from one track to the next. I find this to be a perfect album and if you know the history of this band and extreme metal in general then you will probably find this a worthy addition to your collection as well. For me personally, this one was an instant hit in my metal loving world of music but even if it doesn’t hit you upon first listen i totally recommend multiple listens because this is an exquisitely brilliant album that may require multiple listens to appreciate. There’s nothing ridiculously complicated about this release but it is album that demands a hearing as a whole and not simply a fly-by-moment listening. It has grown on me as a classic of the ages :O

TerryDactyl Five Star Review

I want a five star review to show how important I am to the masses who read rolling stone or masturbate on clouds.

Who are you what looks down the whole sky at me and judges my walk, my talk, my sanity leaving for a few days and I'll go crazeeeee.

And on the B'jeweld throne did the Usurper sit. Causing the fall of Babylon and giant dunder horse of shit. "I'll throw you in the pit" said the emperor of dreams, but he didn't hear our human loving screams. For all that he decided we have much derided and chosen to live instead of in nightmares, in dreams. Eat cake, for cake is good. Watch hornets and never stumble into a spate of bees. When you hear Celtic Frost, understand you'll never human again be.

Vim Fuego Despite being a huge influence on the more extreme end of the metal spectrum, Celtic Frost was always a band to do the unexpected. A majority of the band’s audience had been alienated by the ill-advised glam stylings of ‘Cold Lake’, which the band realised was a mistake. The next release was an opportunity to win back fans and rebuild their musical integrity. What the metal world got was ‘Vanity/Nemesis’.

While this is no ‘To Mega Therion’, it’s no ‘Cold Lake’ either. The old, old school death metal sound may have mellowed a little, but ‘Vanity/Nemesis’ is full of sharp ideas, combining metal and rock in a forward looking combination.

And therein lies the problem. Instead of going back to Celtic Frost’s roots, it looked too far ahead in time, leaving many an old school thrasher scratching his mullet and thinking “what the fuck?”

Tom G. Warrior had gone back to his God-given Fischer, which might well have been a clue, and had finally let his rock roots loose. Devouring big bites of the 60s and 70s, there are big Beatles-influenced melodies, nods to the old-style glam rock sounds (and image) of David Bowie, and stripped back, basic metal/rock. Warrior/Fischer had let his legendary voice ripen a little, sounding more like a gravel throated blues shouter than a blood curdling death growler. Unfortunately, Fischer struggles to hold a tune, and some of the songs, “Wings Of Solitude” in particular, really suffer.

The music throbs in a slightly subdued manner. For a band which once produced total death/thrash blurs, the controlled aggression of songs like “The Heart Beneath” and “Wine In My Hand (Third From The Sun)” would have been unimaginable five years earlier. It’s all pretty fucking solid, and grabs the attention, but doesn’t hold it, like past masterpieces such as “Procreation (Of The Wicked)” or “Circle Of The Tyrants”. The whole album plays more as background music than a lead piece. Still, it’s quite a good hangover album.

The newfound maturity was perhaps a bridge too far for Celtic Frost. Fischer seemed to lose interest in the genres of metal he’d been so influential on, and from the apathetic reception this album received on release, it seemed his audience had lost interest in him.