Celtic Frost are universally recognized as one of the best and most influential extreme metal bands, having achieved in the seminal “To Mega Therion” one of the genre’s primary landmarks whose mark is readily felt in the output of many bands. Although the techniques are relatively far from what later death/black metal bands consolidated, all of the foundations are there, as well as the thematic obsessions that still predominate in the genre. At the time of its release, no album had so vividly conjured the hellish visions that permeates this record with such grandiose and sinister detail. Although we can’t ignore the contribution of Mercyful Fate, the feeling they aimed for is more akin to that of Hammer-style horror movies, a different effect from the scope that Celtic Frost aim to achieve.
One of the decisive factors behind the band’s success is that they know exactly what they want to do – there is an underlying idea looking to affirm itself, even if through limited means. Because of the clarity and conviction with which they conceive this ideal, the music is entirely subordinated to bringing this vision to life and that’s where its expressive power comes from.
The band’s greatest compositional strength has always been the capacity of arranging riffs in a way that is uncannily intuitive, almost as if obeying to a hidden logic of music, alternative to all conventions of tonality and pleasant melody. We say uncanny because the ear, specially if it’s accustomed to more conventional music, will notice the raging chromaticism and harmonic strangeness – which immediately signal that we’re in a different sonic nether-realm – but also perceives the music’s resonance on a deep and obscure level.
Through a simple vocabulary, almost entirely made up of power chords and one-note downpicked sequences, Celtic Frost craft an epic drama with savage riff onslaughts and thunderous passages.
After the feedback of a prolonged chord greets the listener, an ascending three note sequence sets the song in motion, authoritatively cut by two power chords (the first rooted in the first note) that abbreviate the movement of this introductory crawl through a much more crushing and direct progression; their intervention creates a sense of stentorian might as if announcing the coming of something great and wicked, like a demonic horde gearing for battle or the preparation of an infernal banquet. The result is a truly surreal and twisted experience, like the massive weight and epic pathos of a Wagnerian opera filtered through filthy and distorted guitar noise and rough rudimentary musicianship.
“I would never remotely rate myself anywhere near Richard Strauss. But I’ve been deeply fascinated by classical music, by the epic emotions that classical composers were able to convey in their music. Without any amplification, without any modern means, they were able to bring across such intense atmosphere, such pride, such epic landscapes. It pulled me in deeply as a child when I heard classical music. In my own tiny, minute way, we tried to do something like that on To Mega Therion in ’85. Absolutely.” – Tom G. Warrior1
The lyrics describe the tragedy of the fallen and mortal condition of Man through the iconic vocals of Thomas Gabriel Fischer:
“Humilated in human form/We have to die to be reborn
Awaiting the final judgement/The dawn now lifts
Subjects of flesh/Slaves of lust
The cross has failed/You won’t see the coming fall”
The music also conveys, however, a sense of demonic relish or a revelling in the nihilistic landscapes described. A renewed agility is injected in the song through the repetition of the E note followed by a triumphant chord progression starting with the A power chord and ending (after a few repetitions) on the C chord. Much of the song’s further dynamics are fundamentally built on the interaction between these slower chord-based sections that always carry a certain epic density and the faster and simpler single-note sections that temporarily liberate the tension.
The power chords that keep dialoguing with the faster sections are then finally isolated for an imposing doom-paced section, appropriately accompanied by the French horn and exuding imperial might. These sections lay out the vocabulary from which the rest of the song organizes its speech; the first batch of faster riffs is never wholly repeated again and only certain riffs are retrieved along with the introduction of new ones according to the needs of the song’s momentum, eventually making room for a sinister solo based on pairs of duelling notes quickly alternating before finishing on a screeching bent and moving on to the next pair, always increasing in pitch in a crescendo of agony.
As we can see, while Celtic Frost and most of their peers at the time didn’t exactly venture into complex structures, the verse-chorus format is also deemed unfit for the more adventurous and journey-like experience that is being attempted here, inspiring the future innovators of death/black metal in their pursuit of truly complex and sophisticated narrative storytelling. If we try to contextualize the song’s development in those terms, there are actually several “verses”, as the faster riffs constantly evolve through filters of rhythmic variations that greatly enrichen its dynamics.
The intro is reprised after the solo, bringing with it the first four riffs to end the song with the punch of the F power chord after the E note’s preparatory ringing. After the picture is completed, we can thus see how the expressive potential of each of the convened musical components is maximized by the band’s compositional wit, displaying Celtic Frost in full command of the resources they employ to paint their dark and alluring visions. Members of many crucial metal bands, from Emperor to Morbid Angel, would go on to mention these landscapes as inspirations for their own excursions to the vast underworlds.
1 Interview with Tom G. Warrior: https://alarm-magazine.com/2010/qa-tom-warrior-of-celtic-frost-triptykon-and-hellhammer/
