Celtic Frost makes a strange breakthrough with To Mega Therion. For one, they are faithful to the developments in Morbid Tales that come right out of Hellhammer and impose a more coherent form on it. Beyond that, what is most beautiful about this album is that the way order was imposed on the juvenile transgressions of the past elevated it to a dark epic. While the first Celtic Frost recordings in 1984 hinted at a terrible gate and the millions of arms and legs writhing forth from it, the 1985 full-length treats us to an expedition through accursed lands of a parallel dimension.
Outwardly, a few aesthetic additions deserve mentioning. The measured use of timpani for the intro, the ambient track, and specific songs gave the whole depth and width. We also hear the occasional high-pitched vocal behind some of the main rough vocals, an eerie echo that paints another hue on the largely monochromatic canvasing presented here. Quite pleasantly as well, the style is very well-defined, more than on the previous effort, and yet Celtic Frost is able to bring more orderly variety to the riffs and arrangements across the whole album.
To Mega Therion explores a mythologized post-religious self-deism, a form of weaponized atheism that springboards psychological processes of the human bicameral mind that predispose us to worship a greater power. Each song serves not so much as a chapter but as a prism in the circular temple hall whose convex arrangement shines forth a multitude of archetypes depending on how the machinery moves the monuments with respect to the entering light.
The pictures and figures may be clear, but they are self-centered, so rather than a clear forward narrative in line, we have parallel occurrences that elongate skyward with black claws. What one may see as a fantasy offered up to the black gods of a hypothetical psychopathic nomadic force, others receive as symbols of rebellion and self-sufficiency. The gods that help only those who help themselves are the gods you knowingly create.
We are surprised to see how such an orderly a track as ‘Jewel Throne’ contains chaos in a box within the brief preparatory section before the solo, and how the solo itself subdues this energy into a focused outro riff that brings the song back to the main theme-riff. Where Hellhammer splurged energy here and there without the slightest preoccupation of what to do with it, formalized Celtic Frost uses these riff-ideas latent with ultimately uncontainable energy of nuclei of cosmic force trapped in compact structures.
Focusing on the delightful pain of the human form, Celtic Frost objectifies it, moving it from an unstated law to something we can contemplate and thus manipulate. The prison that contains our souls no longer defines us because we can now see it. And while we can recognize things, we can rename and reapproach. The curse sanctifies, the challenge fortifies, and the universe opens up to us.
Morbid Tales fills us with glowing excitement, but well-observed, and the lyrics explored, To Mega Therion looms massive in its majesty of twisted shapes. It’s an incredible though concise dark epic fantasy. The musicians having introduced new patterns within the grander identity of the band, the circle is complete, and the ritual can begin in earnest. You will be thrown right in the middle of a stellar conflict on a planet darkened by an exhausted humanity. The rest is up to you.
