Introduction

TO MEGA THERION (1985)
1) Innocence And Wrath; 2) The Usurper; 3) Jewel Throne; 4) Dawn Of Megiddo; 5) Eternal Summer; 6) Circle Of The Tyrants; 7) (Beyond The) North Winds; 8) Fainted Eyes; 9) Tears In A Prophet's Dream; 10) Necromantical Screams.
Not a serious departure from the style of Morbid Tales, Celtic Frost's first proper LP is still a vast technical improvement. Although not featuring the classic lineup (bassist Dominic Steiner is employed here as a temporary replacement for Eric Ain), this is probably as heavy and relentless as these guys would ever get — fully justifying the album's title (The Great Beast in Ancient Greek, and yes, apparently, this is where Therion, the Swedish symph-metal monster, also got their name from). You may hate this record (understood), you may not remember one track from another (even better understood), but you do have to respect its total lack of compromise, and, with (perhaps forced) repeated listens, its weird strife for melodicity and complexity behind the superficial monotonousness of the songs.
It is almost a pity that in this black metal business, a trade-off has to be made between melodic purity and brutality. A couple listens into ʽThe Usurperʼ, for instance, and you might perceive the song's riff as a potential jawbreaker, but because of all the constant dirty feedback engulfing the notes and because of the overtly loud drums adding to the onslaught, everything fuses together in a sludgy mess. (Where's the London Symphonic Orchestra when you really need it?). The same complaint is applicable to almost everything else, though most of the other riffs do not sound all that original to me — mostly variations on everything from Sabbath to early Metallica. But at least the production is noticeably better: the drums actually sound powerful, unlike so many speed metal albums where it feels as if the drummer is barely alive, just trying to catch up to the insane guitar tempos — and the lead guitar parts achieve the desired «now-for-some-thunder-and-lightning» effect, usually the only reason to put a lead guitar part in a speedy black metal song.
For the sake of keeping this review running a little longer, let me quickly list everything that is found slightly outside the standard black metal formula. The introduction, ʽInnocence And Wrathʼ, features guest musician Wolf Bender on French horn, adding a suitably Wagnerian dimension to the short track — actually, the French horn sounds very much in tune with the metal guitars, and it is a pity that Tom did not exploit this guy's talents any further (he does reappear on the mid-section of ʽDawn Of Megiddoʼ, but playing exactly the same melody). On three of the tracks, guest vocalist Claudia-Maria Mokri makes very brief vocal appearances — sometimes appearing, in Valkyrie fashion, on just one or two lines, goofy and ghostly, in a «what the heck was that?» kind of way. And ʽTears In A Prophet's Dreamʼ continues the tradition of ʽDanse Macabreʼ, a spooky noise track well fit for a horror movie with caves, skeletons, and spiders, or at least an Elder Scrolls dungeon. Uh... that's it. Oh, wait! There are some odd chiming percus­sion effects on ʽNecromantical Screamsʼ, the last track. And some big timpani shit going on at the end, because the album has to end on an epic Wagnerian note, too.
Other than that, there is nothing to discuss, unless you really want to dissect all these riffs note-for-note, and trace them back to their nearest relatives in the extended heavy metal family. Since this obviously does not represent Celtic Frost at the peak of their creativity, I find it hard to actively recommend an album with such an utterly limited formula — and, for what it's worth, I think Bathory did the whole black metal schtick with even more fervor and creativity — but I can understand why it is so highly regarded in professional metal circles, so, ultimately, the record gets a thumbs up because of the sheer curiosity factor. Oh, and the cool title: these literate fel­lows did not even forget to include the proper neuter gender article, so how could this not be counted as the finest linguistic achievement in black metal history?
INTO THE PANDEMONIUM (1987)
1) Mexican Radio; 2) Mesmerized; 3) Inner Sanctum; 4) Tristesses De La Lune; 5) Babylon Fell; 6) Caress Into Oblivion; 7) One In Their Pride; 8) I Won't Dance; 9) Sorrows Of The Moon; 10) Rex Irae (Requiem); 11) Oriental Masquerade; 12) One In Their Pride (Re-entry mix).
It is on this album that Celtic Frost offer us the first reason why we should actually allocate a special cell block in our memory for their music, rather than just lump them in together with the myriad of black metal bands that preceded or followed them. I cannot even vouch for certain that Into The Pandemonium is a good album — but I can vouch for certain that it is a fairly bizarre album for a black metal band, or, in fact, for any metal band. On most of these songs, Tom Warrior and his pals take risks — sometimes rational ones, sometimes completely baffling — so that the word «pandemonium» should not be taken as a direct reference to Milton's Hell, but rather as a metaphorical reference to the chaos and unpredictability of the musical choices that the band has made on this record.
I mean, it might make some occultist sense that for the first song, Tom chose to cover a band called Wall Of Voodoo — but the song itself is ʽMexican Radioʼ, a late New Wave hit from 1983 that celebrated pirate radio stations rather than rivers of blood and the Four Horsemen. The cover is done in classic style, with deep-fried black metal guitars, thrashing drums, and barely discer­nible demonic vocals, yet the lyrics are left intact, so at best we might suggest that here before us is evidence of Satan possessing a wicked sense of humor. Or, perhaps, a veiled hint at pirate radio stations as products of Satan's interference into human affairs? My guess is that they just threw a dart at a list of pop hits pinned to the wall, and proved to their loyal followers that any music may be reinvented as black metal — actually, this is a fairly early implementation of the trick, fairly pervasive today if judging from the number of Britney Spears metal covers on YouTube.
The second surprise arrives with ʽMesmerizedʼ, an epic composition that slightly slows down the tempo and puts more emphasis on the melodic aspects of the deep-fried guitar than on the thrashy rhythm — but, most importantly, introduces a different vocal style, with Tom's «constipated demon» growl swapped for a «dying Tristan» tone, one that has more in common with the incu­rable world weariness of Robert Smith than anything properly metallic in origin. This singing style, further supported by the backing Valkyrie vocals of Claudia-Maria Mokri and also reappea­ring on several other songs, will hardly make anybody think of Tom Warrior as an evocative soulful vocalist, but it is a refreshing diversion from the constant growling, even if it is certainly not enough to make me take this music more seriously than before.
After the more traditional black metal rocker ʽInner Sanctumʼ (whose slowed down mid-section probably contains the most Sabbath-like and memorable riff on the entire album), we get our third surprise — ʽTristesses De La Luneʼ, an orchestral song, conducted by Lothar Krist and sung in French by guest vocalist Manü Moan (from the Swiss Dark Gothic band The Vyllies). The composition, nearly completely dependent on paranoid violin trills, actually sounds highly interesting — although so utterly unpredictable that it was only used on the extended CD, rather than basic LP, edition of the album. Both the CD and the LP got its English equivalent, though: as ʽSorrows Of The Moonʼ, it reverts to its black metal roots, sung by Tom in his ʽMesmerizedʼ vocal, and is honestly far less attractive, because the violin arrangement is much more compli­cated and dynamic than the simple metal riffs that dominate the «common» version.
Surprise #4: ʽOne In Their Prideʼ, continuing the tradition of Celtic Frost's dark psychedelic in­strumentals, but this time with heavy electronic percussion, sampled orchestral passages, and sound effects that have more in common with Art Of Noise than with visions of Bosch's Hell. (There is yet another mix on the CD edition, twice as long, even more electronic and danceable). Is it a good piece of music? Well... Art Of Noise certainly made these things more fun. But again, what really matters here is the baffling factor than sheer quality. On an Art Of Noise record, ʽOne In Their Prideʼ would count as passable filler. On a Celtic Frost record, ʽOne In Their Prideʼ raises questions — for instance, about possible thematic and artistic links between black metal and futuristic/experimental electro-pop.
Surprise #5: although ʽI Won't Danceʼ shares the usual set of keywords with Celtic Frost's earlier black metal anthems ("martyr's scream", "turn to dust", "wicked world", "ring of death", etc.), it actually represents a big leap forward into the realm of barely decodable, wickedly fragmented symbolism, and its chorus, with Tom taking the lead and another female backing vocalist provi­ding a multi-tracked response, has an oddly pop ring to it: "GUY: I won't dance! — GAL: I won't dance within despair!" Again, a fairly weird approach to genre-melding; whether it has any meaning at all is left to each individual listener to decide.
Finally, the album's magnum opus is ʽRex Iraeʼ, an early example of symph-metal, with strings, horns, operatic female vocals, Tom's dying-Tristan tone, and several different sections that range from more generic thrash to slow epic power metal. Once more, I am not exactly a fan, but the more I think of how so many other metal bands would have approached this — probably laying on thick levels of ugly synthesizers — the more this particular sonic approach appeals to me. The grossly overdone vocals are probably the only part that still prevents me from taking this whole thing seriously: a purely instrumental mix of distorted guitars, strings, and horns (perhaps with some wordless Valkyrie vocals in the background, at most) might be preferable. But then again, it might not be worth the struggle to even begin to take «progressive black metal» seriously, so thank you, Mr. Warrior, for ultimately keeping things on the comic book level.
The final judgement? Unquestionably a thumbs up. It is one of those records to which the criterion of «liking / not liking» is barely applicable — it is more of an instructive example of how, having locked oneself up in the strict confines of a formula, it is possible to implode the formula from within without sacrificing your base values, yet still managing to think out of the box, no matter if that thinking gets you nowhere in particular. Of course, it might also get you caught with your pants down in certain circumstances (as Celtic Frost's subsequent career would actually show), but nothing about Into The Pandemonium is truly embarrassing or laughable, provided you are one of those to whom the entire world of heavy metal (or «extreme» heavy metal, at least) is laughable by definition. And, just to make sure: large parts of the record do actually rock — quite mercilessly. If you got the impression that this is all about dying vocals and electronic beats and symphonic arrangements, just start with ʽInner Sanctumʼ and ʽBabylon Fellʼ before proceeding to the truly weird parts.
COLD LAKE (1988)
1) Human II (intro); 2) Seduce Me Tonight; 3) Petty Obsession; 4) (Once) They Were Eagles; 5) Cherry Orchards; 6) Juices Like Wine; 7) Little Velvet; 8) Blood On Kisses; 9) Downtown Hanoi; 10) Dance Sleazy; 11) Roses Without Thorns; 12*) Tease Me; 13*) Mexican Radio (live).
Speak o' the devil: soon after the release of Into The Pandemonium, Celtic Frost properly descended into pandemonium, quarreling between themselves and with their record label. By 1988, the band had effectively disintegrated, yet real warriors never die, so Tom ended up getting back his old drummer Stephen Priestly, recruiting a new bass player (Curt Victor Bryant) and an extra guitar player (Oliver Amberg), and leading the revamped Celtic Frost in yet another direction — with thoroughly disastrous results.
Disastrous, but intriguing, that is. Skim existing reviews for Cold Lake superficially and you will get the impression that in 1988, Celtic Frost turned into a glam metal band à la Mötley Crüe or Poison. In fact, if you check any of their videos from that period (e.g. for ʽCherry Orchardsʼ), or a bit of live tour footage, that impression is easily confirmed — with lionine hair, makeup, garish garb, cocky choreography, and smoke-a-rama-a-plenty, as long as you turn off the sound, they are pretty much indistinguishable from the average glam metal outfit. Once you turn it on, though, you are met with a weird, ugly, and quite idiosyncratic hybrid.
Glam metal, as we all know, was very much of a commercial venture — essentially, those were simple pop songs played with heavy metal guitars. On Cold Lake, Tom Warrior and his new bandmates (which are now also responsible for contributing much of the songwriting) certainly do not go pop: most of the riffs cannot be qualified as hum-along earworms, and most of the gang choruses consist of one-liners belted out by Tom ad nauseam. To this must be added the bizarre effect of the vocals — while they have lost much of their black-metallic devilish venom, they can never truly qualify as actual «singing. Put it this way: on Morbid Tales, Tom Warrior sounded like Satan with serious bowel issues, but on Cold Lake, he sounds more like a hobo — with even more serious bowel issues. Unless the entire world were suffering from constipation and wishing to empathize with the artist, there's totally no way this album could be a resounding commercial success, ever; and there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Tom was perfectly aware of that when preparing the tracks for public release.
So what the hell is this, then? After the brief industrial-hip-hop-metal intro of ʽHuman IIʼ (already schizophrenic, eh?), the first proper song is called ʽSeduce Me Tonightʼ, a suitable title for a power ballad — except that the song is not a ballad at all, but more like a Judas Priest-influenced rocker with big Eighties drums and those «hardcore» vocals that would have probably sent Rob Halford flying for cover. Oh, and when it comes to the instrumental break, Oliver Amberg delivers a Rambo-style shredding solo that comes out of nowhere, disappears into no­thing, and is only nominally connected to the rest of the song. Meanwhile, the chorus, largely consisting of the song title repeated over and over, sounds as if delivered by some stone cold drunk biker to an inflatable doll, because no respectable hooker would approach his piss-stained leather pants within a hundred feet.
And now, rinse and repeat ten times, because this is the only formula for this album. Yes, each and every one of the next tracks is comprised of precisely the same ingredients. Sometimes a bit slower, sometimes a tad faster, they are all built on similar (and usually unmemorable) riffage, gang choruses, and sloppy shredding solos (sometimes devolving into series of obnoxious cherry bombs). Considering the relative stylistic diversity of Pandemonium, such slavish adherence to such a bizarre holding pattern is difficult to understand — but then again, the world of heavy metal was a fairly confused world in the late Eighties, and if this was Tom's idea of what a con­temporary experimental approach to heavy music should sound like, I guess it made more sense for 1988 than for any other year in the business.
We do not have to like it or appreciate it or even respect it, but for the sake of honesty, we should not be lumping a unique failed experiment like Cold Lake together with the pop metal cash-cows of the era. The synthesis of NWoBHM riffage, glam attitudes, and black metal ugliness was doomed from the start because it made no sense and satisfied nobody; yet nobody could deny that Celtic Frost were continuing their search for innovation, and that their servile adoption of a new rigid formula for the entire record meant that they desperately wanted it to work. Plus, Tom has to be commended for acknowledging his own mistakes — after the album flopped, he has publicly disowned it and admitted that it should have never seen the light of day (although he puts part of the blame on producer Tony Platt, but it was not Tony Platt who wrote those riffs and sang those vocals). Respecting that opinion, and getting fairly little enjoyment from the album myself, I concur in a thumbs down rating here; but in a way, it only boosts the reputation of Celtic Frost that their worst album ever also happens to be one of the most artistically baffling albums made by a heavy metal band in what might have been the defining decade for most of the subgenres of heavy metal.
VANITY/NEMESIS (1990)
1) The Heart Beneath; 2) Wine In My Hand; 3) Wings Of Solitude; 4) The Name Of My Bride; 5) This Island Earth; 6) The Restless Seas; 7) Phallic Tantrum; 8) A Kiss Or A Whisper; 9) Vanity; 10) Nemesis; 11) Heroes; 12*) A Descent To Babylon (Babylon Asleep).
In an alleged attempt to correct the shortcomings and wrongdoings of Cold Lake, Tom Warrior fired Amberg, with Curt Victor Bryant assuming both bass and lead guitar duties; later on, tour musician Ron Marks was recruited as a session player to aid in this matter, and Eric Ain also re­turned to add bass to the lead-in track, ʽThe Heart Beneathʼ. In short, it was chaos as usual, yet the final results show no signs of confusion — on the contrary, Vanity/Nemesis is steel-ruled by an even more precise conception than Cold Lake.
What happens here is that Tom completely purges the music of any unhappy «glam» connota­tions, concentrating instead on two primary influences — NWOBHM and thrash, so that most of the songs now sound like the loyal offspring of Judas Priest and Megadeth, combining the not-so-fast tempos and the geometric riffage precision of the former with the brutal guitar tones and the evil-grin attitudes of the latter. The only thing that remains of the band's «black metal» past are the occasional — very rare — occultist streak in the lyrics, and, of course, the constipated Satan vocals from Tom, which sound just as ridiculous on this album as they did on Cold Lake.
True to the baffle-your-neighbor ideology that began with ʽMexican Radioʼ, the album turns more tables on us with Tom's choice of covers — ʽThis Island Earthʼ from Bryan Ferry's The Bride Stripped Bare, and later (only on the CD edition, though) no less than David Bowie's own ʽHeroesʼ. The former song, at least, with its desperate-suicidal lyrics about one man's personal apocalypse, yields fairly easily to a Celtic Frost reinvention, and features probably the best lead guitar work on the album (melodic and shrill in an almost classic-rock manner, with a tolerable minimum of shredding); the latter is an unsuccessful joke of the «Taylor Swift death metal cover» variety that addictive YouTube surfing is sure to bring up sooner or later these days. But that's Celtic Frost for you — no quality control whatsoever, mixing good ideas with stupid jokes until all the remaining Celts freeze over.
As for the original songs, the formula described above applies to them all equally — at best, expect a brief acoustic interlude now and then, sometimes accompanied by haunting Gothic female vocals from one or more of Warrior's mascara-tainted acquaintances. The longest and probably the most memorable of these is ʽNemesisʼ, steered by an unnerving Judas Priest-style chugging riff and slowly hammering the "will death cleanse me of this nemesis?" chorus into your head until you feel like you're ready to obliterate stone walls with your fists. Other than that, I remember nothing whatsoever even after three listens, though I cannot honestly say that I hated what I heard — more often than not, they get a good headbanging groove going on. With better vocals, some of these songs might have amounted to something, but Tom's vocal style really does not agree with this much more clean and disciplined style of playing than they used to have.
Public opinion on Vanity/Nemesis remains split — some take the glam purge as a clear sign of returning to form, others treat it as fairly nominal and consider the record to be just another piece of «commercialized» crap. One thing is for sure: it sounds different enough from Cold Lake to extend Celtic Frost's reputation as heavy metal's greatest purveyors of diversity. The only ques­tion in my mind is why the hell did they not decide to experiment even more, returning to the level of Into The Pandemonium? Changing your formula in between albums is fine, but it isn't really that good when within any given album everything still sounds the same. Strange policy, if you ask me, but then, I've never set foot within a ten-mile radius of the heavy metal community and am perfectly happy with this role of a cautious overseer from afar, so I'd be the least likely candidate to self-confidently poke and prod the brain cells of Mr. Tom Warrior and his pals.
ADDENDA
PARCHED WITH THIRST AM I AND DYING (1985-1991; 1992)
1) Idols Of Chagrin; 2) A Descent To Babylon (Babylon Asleep); 3) Return To The Eve; 4) Juices Like Wine; 5) The Inevitable Factor; 6) The Heart Beneath; 7) Cherry Orchards; 8) Tristesses De La Lune; 9) Wings Of Solitude; 10) The Usurper; 11) Journey Into Fear; 12) Downtown Hanoi; 13) Circle Of The Tyrants; 14) In The Chapel In The Moonlight; 15) I Won't Dance (The Elders Orient); 16) The Name Of My Bride; 17) Mexican Radio; 18) Under Apollyon's Sun.
The importance of this compilation, originally released in 1992, has now significantly decreased since many of its tracks were dispersed as bonus additions to remastered CD editions of the band's overall catalog. Even in 1992, however, it was a somewhat strange package, interspersing rarities and oddities with an almost random selection of tracks taken from albums all the way back to Mega Therion (but, strangely, not Morbid Tales). Whether the old fans even back then were happy to receive an additional copy of three numbers from Cold Lake and three more from Vanity/Nemesis is a big question. Whether the presence of four previously unreleased songs was enough of an incentive to make them tolerate these additional copies is an even bigger one.
Anyway, here is a brief rundown on these «lost treasures». ʽIdols Of Chagrinʼ is the reworking of a 1991 demo — a slow Vanity/Nemesis-style power metal riff-rocker, with some chords soun­ding dangerously close to AC/DC's ʽRock'n'Roll Ain't Noise Pollutionʼ and the general atmos­phere reminiscent of both AC/DC and Accept (but with far uglier vocals). ʽThe Inevitable Factorʼ is an outtake from Cold Lake, ironically featuring a more memorable riff than most of the regu­lar songs on there, but again spoiled by silly «dying metal Tristan» vocals. ʽJourney Into Fearʼ is a very old outtake (from 1985), and thus, faster, more aggressive, and more fun than all the later outtakes — but nothing in particular here with which you were not already acquainted on To Mega Therion. Finally, ʽUnder Apollyon's Sunʼ (I think they sort of confused Apollyon, the Greek equi­valent of Abaddon, with the god Apollo here, but perhaps this was intentional) is ano­ther demo from 1991, but this time with a more Sabbath-esque riff, and an almost industrial crunch in the middle — melodically, perhaps, the most ambitious of these tunes.
Other than that, you have a few remixed versions (ʽDowntown Hanoiʼ from Cold Lake, for instance) with cleaner and sharper guitar sound, which probably still does not redeem them as much as we'd want to, and a few scooped-up rare jokes, such as the black metal take on the old popu­lar standard ʽIn The Chapel In The Moonlightʼ (from a 1987 promotional EP). It all works fine as a career retrospective, especially if you rectify the dumb running order of the tracks, but not a single moment here is truly eye-opening in any sense: at no stage in their diverse career, apparently, did Celtic Frost produce something so unusual that they would decide to keep it hidden from us until they ran out of new material. Thus, for completists only.

CHEAP TRICK