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CELTIC FROST: To Mega Therion - 1985
re-release - 1998
Noise Records |
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I SAY, LEAVE THEM ALL BEHIND
It was about 10 years ago when I first heard CELTIC FROST: TO MEGA THERION,
and much of that memory is musty. It may have been the brain killing, mind altering drugs I was using at the time (beer). At any rate, a buddy of mine had a new CD and CD player. The CD was from the band CELTIC FROST, but I'll be damned if I can remember the title. All I know is that I was unimpressed by the CD and another friend
who was there was going ballistic at how the CD screwed up the music.
At that time CD technology was still relatively new and my friend was
one of the last of the dying "Record" fans. With his dramatic
insistence that we should carry the party over to his apartment, where
he had CELTIC FROST on record, we picked up and left. I'm not joking, he was really getting
carried away about the situation! So we all went over to his place where
he presented his 3 records of CELTIC FROST. The first one he put
on was TO MEGA THERION. We weren't any deeper than 30 seconds into
the first song when I realized that this was a piece that freakin' JAMMED! We were all blown away by the incredibly fast, ripping, knock-down drag
out music! The singer didn't sing so much as speak over the music, seeming
to throw out words not in time with the song, but whenever the hell he
felt like it. We spent the rest of that night drinking and listening to
nothing but CELTIC FROST, over and over: I had become one of the
converted.
Flash forward to this year (1999) when Noise Records has now picked up the entire
CELTIC FROST catalog and re-released it with proper digital mixing
overseen by band leader Tom G. Warrior. As soon as I saw the H.
R. Giger artwork on the cover and realized that it was CELTIC FROST, I bought that sucker on the spot. When I got it home I naturally recalled the mediocre sound of that first CD, but again, within the first 30 seconds into the album, I was hooked. It was All there, hardcore as ever! TO MEGA THERION still rocks as hard and punishing as ever equal
to and even eclipsing much of what is being made today in Black and Death Metal
Not all the songs just rip through, one after the other though. There are
also some intriguing mood pieces. The albums first intro piece "Innocence
And Wrath", is reminiscent of Russian classical music along the lines
of Mussorsky while "The Tears In A Prophet's Dream" is more
in keeping with hardcore Industrial bands like COIL than Heavy Metal.
CELTIC FROST: TO MEGA THERION is a classic album and once you hear this great
re-issue, you'll be buying everything CELTIC FROST has in print.
5 Perplex Skulls all the way
This review
copyright 1999 by E.C.McMullen Jr.
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