Celtic Frost, was and are probably one of the most influential metal bands in Europe during the eighties, especially in the black and occult metal scene.
Hellhammer was the ultimate beginning for the band but with time the band changed both name and style.
Celtic Frost was born thanks to the front man
Tom Hunter, and
Celtic Frost is a band that has been experimenting with their material. I have heard a lot of bands that has changed their sound quite a bit but still had their basic formula still present in their music. But
Celtic Frost is probably the only band I have seen done such drastic changes in their music, as I once saw a second-short video clip where
Celtic Frost was playing live and they performed the song called
Circle Of The Tyrants. It sounded pretty much black and death-metal and I thought that this band would probably stay outside my personal interests, but I started later to look for some of their music after listening to
Obituary's cover of that particular song. I looked for facts and then I saw the genres that the band has been playing in and are still playing: from thrash/black/death to even glam rock and then onto some sort of gothic doom metal mix. Their three first albums are considered to their best albums because they represent the band musical style much better than the other albums. The band broke up a few times, as
Tom Hunter was also during that time working in an other band called
Apollyon Sun. But that band would also run its own race and later
Tom came back and reunited
Celtic Frost to record their comeback album. It was a huge gap from 1992 to 2006, and during that time the band was working on the album called
Monotheist, but this album also proved to be a fan splitting album.
All is cold and frozen.
Frozen the sea, frozen the sky.
Frozen is death, but I cannot die.
With
Monotheist, the music is at least as sick as the spooky album cover, and I would describe this album as twisted, sick, weird but still melodic and beautiful at times. It was released in 2006 and they even took help from the metal god
Peter Tagtgren from
Hypocrisy during the final recording of the album. The songs here varies between intense black/doom and sometimes gothic ballads, with
Progeny,
Ground and
Os Abysmi Vel Daath being some of the tracks that I think have more black-metal influences, both musically and vocally, and these are also some of the songs that dislike the most.
A Dying Good Coming Into Human Flesh starts with both calm vocals and guitars making it very melodic from the start, but it will eventually get more instruments and a different vocal work which will make also sound a bit black/doomish.
Drown In Ashes and
Obscured sound more like peaceful ballads, because here you even have beautiful, angelic female vocals haunting the songs alongside
Tom Hunter's "speaking" so to say. The songs are also quite atmospheric and they do have a catchy and melodic vibe.
Obscured takes on a more depressive and sad approach rather than haunting and beautiful as
Drown In Ashes.
Domain Of Decay reminds a bit of morbid
Hypocrisy essence, as it enters with heavy soaring guitars and strained vocals and has a twisted but half-groovy tempo.
Ain Elohim starts off with a more death-metal based formula, because it enters with double bass kicking drums and simplistic guitar work, and the vocals sound once again strained and loud, though it varies a bit near the end when it sounds more calm and has a chanting sound.
Totengott is a very dark and atmospheric song but it is probably the worst song too, at least in my opinion. A foreboding and very slow sound is present while explosions echo in the back ground. The song soon gets horrible thanks to the ear-splitting shrieks from
Tom. If you have seen The Lord Of The Ring movies and are familiar to the creature Gollum, then you know how these shrieks will sound like.
Synagoga Satanae is also a very sluggish song with screechy guitars and more strained vocals, but it does though have a bit variety both musically and vocally, which is needed because this song is the longest song at 14 minutes. The last track
Winter (Requiem, Chapter Three: Finale) is an instrumental song with violins, and this is a good song to complete an album with such chaos and confusion. This song remains slow but it is very atmospheric and melodic, and it feels very sad, depressive and hopeless, yet you will still think it sounds beautiful.
I have never heard his voice nor have I ever seen his form.
Yet still he casts his dark shadow on the light of my being.
Sometimes you just want to get an album just to hear how the band sounds like, but I got this album and I didn't know what to expect. When I was told that this was a gothic/doom record which had some melodic moments I thought: "Well this could be interesting". I don't know what to say about this album now when I have been listening it through, since my negative thoughts might be just as many as my positive thoughts regarding this album. Since I don't have basically any knowledge about doom or gothic-metal I will still try to end this review with straight answers. Things that I liked about this album were its melodic moments, since they gave you a moment to "rest" before you headed on towards the other sick and distorted songs. The female vocals were a huge surprise, partially because I like female vocalists, and this time they were a perfect contrast to the dark sound that hovers over the other songs. The variety was a good thing indeed; every song didn't have this sluggish tempo, and all the songs had their own character more or less, if you like it or not are just another matter about personal taste. I might come up with more good thoughts but now I will tell you my bad thoughts. For once, the guitars were probably the most annoying guitar work I have heard yet. I know that it is wrong to judge an artist or an album if you just have heard one album single album, but this is the way I feel about this album. The guitars were horrible, and even if you gave a guitar to ten year old kid he or she would probably play similar notes or even better, since there was a lot of string bending and the riffs were nothing else but simple chords played in different tempos, there was no signs of technique or variety. The acoustics were good though even if they sounded very simplistic and same goes for a few solos and other melodic guitar tunes, but the guitars overall sounded pathetically bad in my ears. If it is meant to sound like that in the doom-metal genre then fine but I didn't liked it at all. The vocals was both bad and good, as
Tom's calm vocals sounded like they suited the music better than his raspy hybrid black-metal vocals, and the most horrid part was in the track called
Totengott.
Feel my holy wrath. I am glorified.
I cannot be denied. I am he who is.
That was pretty much what I felt about this album. I'm going to check out more of
Celtic Frost's so I can judge this album better, but now I think this was a weird album, and this is without a doubt the most hardest and most difficult album I have reviewed yet. I have split thoughts about this album, since the songs I like get better and better the more I listen to them while songs I really hate just get worse. But as I said before, since I'm a huge fan of the thrash-metal genre and other intensive metal genres I might not be the right person to review a doom-metal album but I have said my words regarding this album and I will stand by my words I have used to review this album. I would recommend this album people who like the doom-metal genre; it has slow songs which I know is very typical for the doom genre. Fans of this band might enjoy this album, if you happen to like all of
Celtic Frost's album, otherwise this might be a huge disappointment to you who love their earliest achievements.
Band Members
Tom G Hunter (Thomas Gabriel Fischer) – vocals and guitars
Martin Eric Ain – bass
Franco Sesa – drums
Pros
+ The female vocals contributed a great contrast to the other darker songs
+ At times very melodic and atmospheric songs
+ Still a fairly unique record though
+ Decent variety in everything basically
Cons
- If I would create a comeback album I would return to my old roots so to say
- I personally hated the guitar work (most of the time)
- This album does not suit everybody, it has very limited fan base in my opinion
- Sometimes you just want to trash the album because of it’s sometimes highly annoying and boring songs
Recommended Tracks (Notice that these are my favourite songs.)
-- Drown In Ashes
-- Obscured
-- A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh
-- Winter (Requiem, Chapter Three: Finale
This album will be given a vague 3/5
