Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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Though they'd been together for barely a year and had yet to play their first concert, Celtic Frost brought a remarkably accomplished vision to the recording of their first album, 1984's Morbid Tales. With its highly focused thrash metal intensity and peculiar mix of satanic and esoteric lyrics, the album would sow the seeds of Frost's overwhelming influence in years to come. And, along with the powerful visual impact of its bandmembers' leather-bound wardrobe and badly-drawn facial corpse paint, songs like "Visions of Mortality" and "Morbid Tales" would be analyzed, digested, and regurgitated by manic hordes of disillusioned European youths forming their own death metal bands in years to come. Following the hellish primal screams of intro "Human," and the lethal speed metal of "Into the Crypts of Rays," Tom Warrior (aka Thomas Gabriel Warrior) and company lock into a fierce groove which rarely falters through to the last riff of closer "Nocturnal Fear." With its primitive grind, the excellent "Procreation (Of the Wicked)" (later covered by Sepultura) remains a career highlight, but shows no sign of the band's future experiments in avant-garde metal. In fact, these are only hinted at by the female voice recital utilized in "Return to the Eve," and the bizarre noise experiments of "Danse Macabre" – a collage of sound effects, violin, Warrior's moans, and all-around mayhem. As for Celtic Frost's own source of inspiration, Venom and other New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands provide the bulk of it. The main riff of "Dethroned Emperor," for instance, simply offers a slight variation of Diamond Head's "Am I Evil." But it was Celtic Frost's very isolation from rock's typical breeding grounds which fed their uniquely European perspective. Had they not been impoverished outcasts within Switzerland's protective prosperity in their formative years, it is unlikely that theirs could have been such a twisted and wonderful evolution.

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Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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The bombastic "Innocence and Wrath" starts To Mega Therion off on just the appropriate note – Wagnerian horn lines, booming drums, and a slow crunch toward apocalypse. Nobody can say Tom Warrior and his merry men don't know how to make the end of the world sound appropriately dramatic. With that setting the tone, it's into the maddeningly wild and woolly Celtic Frost universe full bore, Warrior roaring out his vocals with glee and a wicked smile while never resorting to self-parodic castrato wails. "The Usurper" alone is worth the price of admission, an awesome display of Warrior's knack around brute power and unexpectedly memorable riffs. It isn't so much headbanging as body-slamming that Celtic Frost are after here. While there's not a lot of variety throughout Therion – everything is mostly as already indicated, big, loud, and invoking death and storm clouds conjured up by pagan gods – what does crop up outside the formula makes a good experience even better. Mostly that's got to do with the subtle touches the band buries in the mix – wailing noises, chanting choirs, and more than once an actual sense of space and echo, like the group is really thundering down from the Alps. The contrast of a brief operatic aria and groaning demon voice behind Warrior on "Circle of the Tyrants," right before leading into a mind-blowingly powerful full-on band assault, is one such prime moment. Other prime cuts in general include the perfectly titled "Dawn of Megiddo" – can't get any better than that, really! – the shadowy instrumental mood-out "Tears in a Prophet's Dream," and "Eternal Summer," which makes such a prospect seem like the last thing on earth one would want. Ending on another prime note, the hyperdramatic "Necromantical Screams," To Mega Therion is and remains death metal at its finest.

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Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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Having created what would remain an archetypal metal record in To Mega Therion, it seemed like Thomas Gabriel Warrior and his compatriots were after an exact repeat on first blush with Pandemonium. Armed with harrowing Bosch cover art and song titles like "Babylon Fell" and "Sorrows of the Moon," what else could be the result? With the first track, though, all bets were off, showing Warrior to be one of the least predictable folks around. The song? A nuclear-strength rip through Wall of Voodoo's West Coast new wave classic "Mexican Radio," with everything intact down to the nerdishly sung line about eating barbecued iguana. Hearing Warrior gasp and snarl his way through Stan Ridgway's shaggy dog tale is one of those not-to-be-believed-until-heard experiences. The next big change surfaces on "Mesmerized" – rather than again invoking Beelzebub in a harsh rasp, Warrior actually sings a weepy love lyric in a sad moan. Admittedly the beloved appears to be some ancient Roman priestess, but still, this is surprising (and effective) stuff, a singing approach he reuses throughout the album. "Rex Irae (Requiem)" is especially fine, a blending of operatic backing vocals, orchestrations, and just enough crunch when needed. Then there's "One in Their Pride," which exists on the album in two different forms – both of them drum machine-laden dub/industrial mixes. Running rampant throughout Pandemonium is the massive metal crunch and lyrics about death and destruction with which Celtic Frost made its name, so fans of earlier stuff won't feel too taken by surprise. "Inner Sanctum," detailing a wish to "forget in the sleep of death," is especially fine. But whether it's the strings and orgasmic female French lead singer – and nothing else – on "Tristesses de la Luna" or the brassy R&B backing vocals on "I Won't Dance," Pandemonium is a record taking happy delight in trashing expectations to follow a stranger muse.

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Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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After the massive artistic success of Into the Pandemonium, Celtic Frost leader Thomas Gabriel Warrior was abandoned by his other bandmates and left to re-create the band. On top of that, Celtic Frost's fanbase had expanded into a literate bunch who desired the avant-garde tendencies of the group and waited for yet another landmark album. So when Warrior appeared with teased hair and a traditional metal sound, the backlash was legendary. History has painted Cold Lake as a pop-metal disaster, often branding Tom Warrior's new lineup and image as a calculated plan for financial success. But anyone with even a passing knowledge of what made for successful '80s radio should know that this record doesn't contain one track that could have broke into the mainstream. Often recalling the classic work of Iron Maiden with a touch of Megadeth's technical wizardry thrown in, it does sound like a different band. But these songs are actually lively and energetic, filled with some of the most memorable riffs and catchy songs in the Celtic Frost catalog. Sadly, Warrior's tendency to write cliché-ridden lyrics isn't hidden by the usual Celtic Frost weirdness, and his mean-spirited attitude toward women makes songs like "Dance Sleazy" hard to take. But if these detriments can be forgiven, there is some really interesting stuff here. A fascinating tribute to Marilyn Monroe ("Cherry Orchards") offers a unique viewpoint of her life, while "Roses Without Thorns" is a curious metal anthem that contains some killer dual-guitar interplay. Still containing Celtic Frost trademarks like eerie female vocals and unanticipated tempo changes, only a few tracks disappoint musically. Looking past the vacuous groupie tracks, there is some vibrant heavy metal here that is longing to be rediscovered by fans who can appreciate how good this is considering Warrior's unenviable situation. It's still the worst Celtic Frost album, but the truth is that Cold Lake really isn't that bad.

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Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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Few bands in the metal world get a second chance after a major career misstep, and no band exemplifies this problem more than Celtic Frost. Two albums ago (Into the Pandemonium), they were pioneering avant-garde sensibilities in the thrash genre and wooing audiences and critics with their vast abilities. Then everyone but leader Tom Warrior quit the band, and the next album (Cold Lake) ushered in a new sound and a glam image that turned fans and critics away in droves. So after getting back original bassist Martin Ain, Warrior blended the two lineups and decided to get back to his roots on Vanity/Nemesis. Crafting a grinding chug that emphasized their mastery of thrash metal, the album was an ugly beast that offered a unique sound that no bands have really tried to adopt since. Whispered passages and wildly experimental guitar solos are two of the elements that carry from song to song, while the thick riffs of their pre-Cold Lake sound manage to survive the transition quite easily. This all adds up to a mean little album that spits out vicious songs that have such a strange and arty bent to them that it borders on parody at times. That isn't to say that the songs aren't still juggernauts, but the lyrics to tracks like "Phallic Tantrum" are so vague and heady that they don't even achieve the goal of making the listener think. One track in particular stands out for being a major artistic success here: "Wings of Solitude." Assisted by the delicate wail of Michele Amar on the verses, the band delivers a song that mixes the strange sensuality of goth rock with Warrior's classically inspired metal to create a track that is at times sexy, brutally heavily, and oddly soulful. A mournful cover of Bryan Ferry's "This Island Earth" is a surprising success, while a version of David Bowie's "Heroes" is a miscalculated failure that so drastically changes the original that it is a wonder they ever bothered. The latter song aside, this is a slightly flawed but otherwise satisfying album, offering a direction for heavy metal that no other band tried to follow up on at the time. Sadly, their reputation as sellouts carried over into this record, and without directly repeating their black metal heyday, many critics also unfairly panned it. Years later, this stands as a sad document of a band trying to pull themselves together after a problematic period and succeeding artistically while unintentionally ending their career in the process.

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Celtic Frost - Classic Albums (1984-1992, 6CD)

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Quite the title, and quite appropriate for this career-spanning compilation, from the band's earliest recordings in 1984 up through 1992. Unfortunately the liner notes aren't all they could be, listing the origins of some of the tracks but not all. A fair amount are true rarities, though, including cuts from EPs, rerecordings and studio jams, not to mention an unreleased cut or two. Perhaps unsurprisingly, To Mega Therion and Into the Pandemonium cuts feature prominently, though some of the more successful cuts from later albums crop up as well. Admittedly successful is where you find it – the group's late eighties/early nineties veer towards glam and goth would have been more successful had Warrior cut out some of the cheese soloing, but the main riffcrunch usually still did the trick. Regardless, the emphasis is mostly on the doom-shadowed side of the band's work than its sometimes striking genre explorations, though the joys of "Tristesses de la Lune" and a live-in-the-studio rerecording of "Mexican Radio" help leaven up proceedings. It's amusing to hear Warrior's voice change from time to time as the cuts move backward and forward chronologically, from the earlier roars and yelps to the smoother, sleazier approach later on. Add in the sometimes portentous and sometimes lustfully moaning female guest vocals for effect, and things definitely were a most surprising brew sometimes in Frostland. As for the roiling deathstomp material the band made its name with, cuts like the vicious Therion tracks "The Usurper" and "Circle of The Tyrants," to name but two standouts, make it clear that it wasn't all hype. Appropriately corroded cover art and the full source of the title quote – an ancient Greek/Roman prayer – add to the veneer of historical weight the band played around with more than once.

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