Celtic frost

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Celtic frost
Tuska Festival 2006
Tuska Festival 2006
General information
origin SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland
Genre (s) Thrash metal , avant-garde metal , black metal
founding 1984, 2006
resolution 1993, 2008
Website www.celticfrost.com
Founding members
Vocals, guitar
 Tom G. Warrior ( Thomas Gabriel Fischer )
bass
 Martin Eric Ain (Martin Stricker) † 2017
Drums
 Stephen Priestly
Last occupation
bass
 Martin Eric Ain
Drums
 Franco Sesa

Celtic Frost was a Swiss metal band that was formed in 1984. The group disbanded in 1993 and reunited in 2006, before disbanding again in 2008. The band's music had a huge impact on numerous metal bands of the 1980s and 1990s.

Band history

Celtic Frost was founded in 1984 by Tom G. Warrior ( Thomas Gabriel Fischer ), Martin Eric Ain (Martin Stricker) and Stephen Priestly after Hellhammer broke up and released the mini-LP Morbid Tales on the German label Noise Records , with Hellhammer had signed; this turned out to be a success. The band then toured Germany and Austria. In 1985 the mini-LP Emperor's Return was released , which also contained their first hit with Circle of the Tyrants .

For their first full album To Mega Therion , which was released that same year, the band was able to win over HR Giger to design the cover and built on the success of the first mini-LPs. The song Circle of the Tyrants was then published again in a new version. The album title refers to the Antichrist from the Revelation of John .

The second album Into the Pandemonium was released in 1987 and should have an immense influence on the development of European metal. Elements of Gothic Rock and Dark Wave joined the Thrash Metal .

During a subsequent tour of the United States , the members' financial problems and personal tensions came to a head in the complete dissolution of Celtic Frost. Six months later, Tom G. Warrior decided to resume work, along with Stephen Priestly, Oliver Amberg and Curt Victor Bryant. Despite his decision, he apparently showed less interest in the recording, leaving the work to Cold Lake Amberg and producer Tony Platt. Stylistically, the band moved away from their Thrash Metal roots and tended towards Heavy Metal and Glam Metal . The album was not successful in the mainstream or in the metal scene , but instead led to sell-off allegations.

On the following album Vanity / Nemesis from 1990, on which the band presented themselves again much harder, Martin Eric Ain (Slayed Necros; real name Martin Stricker) returned to the band. Acclaimed by critics, the band was unable to restore their reputation. In 1992 the retrospective Parched With Thirst Am I and Dying appeared , which, in addition to well-known titles and previously unreleased songs, also contained two new pieces that were supposed to give a foretaste of the next album. This album with the working title Under Apollyon's Sun was no longer realized because the group broke up again.

In 1999/2000, the band's founding members got back together to work on the re-release of the early albums. It turned out that both Fischer and Stricker were interested in a revival of Celtic Frost, so the group reformed and started work on a new album. The result was the album Monotheist , on which the band had worked for more than four years and which was released in 2006 (record company: Century Media , publisher of the new Celtic Frost pieces: Edition Dictatura des Kapitals / Budde Musikverlag, Berlin). From June 2006 to May 2007 the band went on an extensive world tour, including 71 concerts in the United States alone as headliners and as a special guest of Type O Negative . After appearing at the Wacken Open Air and With Full Force Festival in 2006, Celtic Frost returned to Germany in March and April 2007.

On April 9, 2008, Tom Gabriel Fischer surprisingly announced his departure from Celtic Frost. According to the official homepage and his blog , he left the band “because of insurmountable serious wear and tear on a personal level”. The remaining band members then canceled all upcoming concerts for 2008 (including the planned performance for the tenth birthday of the Giger Museum in Château St. Germain, Switzerland). On September 9, 2008, Fischer and Ain announced the final breakup of Celtic Frost in a joint statement on the band's homepage.

In the meantime, Tom Gabriel Fischer, together with the guitarist from Dark Fortress and tour guitarist from Celtic Frost, V Santura, the former drummer of Fear My Thoughts , Norman Lonhard, and a hitherto unknown bassist named Vanja Slajh, is completely devoting himself to his new band Triptykon , who have already played before Fischer's exit from Celtic Frost was founded as a side project. The debut album Eparistera Daimones , on which Tom Gabriel Fischer and V Santura worked for over two years and which also contains material that was originally intended to be recorded for a successor to Monotheist , was released on March 19, 2010.

Martin Eric Ain died in October 2017 after a heart attack.

Musical development

The music of the predecessor Hellhammer was heavily influenced by Venom . Tom Warrior later said about this phase that the musicians were not yet good enough to create something of their own. From the guitar riffs to the names of the songs to the pseudonyms , everything was a "lousy photocopy" of Venom. The band was accused of having no talent, at the same time the musicians did not agree with the development of the scene, in particular that mainstream bands like Mötley Crüe used an image with their 1983 album Shout at the Devil that was not related to their music fit. Instead, the musicians founded Celtic Frost in order to dare a new musical beginning.

This manifested itself in the EP Morbid Tales , released in 1984 , which can be assigned to Thrash Metal and is still considered to be trend-setting for the genres of Death Metal and Black Metal , whereby one of the most important points of the band from the beginning was the criticism of Black Metal and they wanted nothing to do with the scene. Characteristic for the style of the band were simple and catchy song structures that were no longer just kept at high speed, but were also located in the middle tempo range . The lower pitched guitars, the growling and the short "Ugh!" Calls from singer Tom Fischer in combination with the double bass were new stylistic elements that had not been released by any band before. This made them the pioneers of an innovative new trend within metal.

Compared to Morbid Tales , To Mega Therion (1985) was slower and more structured and thus represented the link to the 1987 classic Into the Pandemonium . Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann classifies the music as Dark Metal and combines gloomy sound with avant-garde elements. It is regarded as a reference work for Black Metal as well as Death Metal , without being clearly assigned to one of the two genres.

The album Cold Lake , released in 1988, represented a complete departure from the extreme metal that had been played until then. The album featured traditional heavy metal with glam metal influences from bands such as Mötley Crüe, the musicians performed with hairspray- styled hairdos and posed in photos « lustful and with an open fly ». Because of the disappointed reactions from fans and critics and possibly also because of the hoped-for but never-occurring commercial success, the band changed their stylistic direction again. In addition, there was the reactivation of the line-up, in which the band was active until 1987.

Vanity / Nemesis , released in 1990, is considered to be the band's most mature work to date, combining Thrash Metal with well thought-out arrangements . Due to the gloomy mood of the songs the album will continue to affect the European doom metal bands like My Dying Bride or Cathedral and the later bands like Paradise Lost played Gothic Metal awarded.

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Monotheist
  DE 67 06/12/2006 (1 week)
  CH 41 06/11/2006 (4 weeks)

Studio albums

  • 1985: To Mega Therion (re-released 1999)
  • 1987: Into the Pandemonium (re-released 1999)
  • 1988: Cold Lake
  • 1990: Vanity / Nemesis (re-released 1999)
  • 2006: monotheist

Compilations

  • 1992: 1984–1992: Parched with Thirst Am I and Dying (best of album; re-release 1999)
  • 2003: Are You Morbid? The Best of Celtic Frost (Best of Album)

Singles and EPs

  • 1984: Morbid Tales (mini-LP, re-released 1999 with Emperor's Return )
  • 1985: Emperor's Return (mini-LP)
  • 1986: Tragic Serenades (12 ″ -EP)
  • 1987: I Won't Dance (12 ″ -EP)
  • 1987: The Collector’s (one-sided 12 ″ single)
  • 1990: Celtic Frost Promotional 12 ″ EP (12 ″ -EP)
  • 1990: Wine in My Hand (Third from the Sun) (12 ″ -EP)

literature

  • Thomas Gabriel Fischer: Are You Morbid? Into the Pandemonium of Celtic Frost . Sanctuary Publishing, 2000, ISBN 1-86074-310-2 .
  • Thomas Gabriel Fischer, Martin Eric Ain: Only Death Is Real . An Illustrated History of Hellhammer and Early Celtic Frost 1981–1985. Bazillion Points Books, New York City 2010, ISBN 978-0-9796163-9-6 (English).
  • Celtic Frost in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

Commons : Celtic Frost  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Celtic Frost Biography .
  2. ^ Ian Christe: Sound of the Beast. The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal . ItBooks, New York 2004, ISBN 0-380-81127-8 , pp. 105 .
  3. ^ J. Bennett: Procreation of the Wicked: The Making of Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales . In: Albert Mudrian (Ed.): Precious Metal. Decibel presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces . Da Capo Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-306-81806-6 , pp. 32 .
  4. ↑ Michel Renaud: Metal Crypt - Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales Review. In: The Metal Crypt. Accessed May 16, 2010.
  5. ↑ Celtic Frost. In: Metal Storm. Accessed May 16, 2010.
  6. ↑ Thrash Metal. In: Hell is Open. Accessed May 16, 2010.
  7. ^ J. Bennett: Procreation of the Wicked. P. 31.
  8. ↑ a b c d Celtic Frost . In: Holger Stratmann, Michael Rensen, Götz Kühnemund (eds.): Rock Hard Enzyklopädie . Rock Hard, Dortmund 1998, ISBN 3-9805171-0-1 , p. 61 f .
  9. ^ Frank Albrecht: Celtic Frost: Morbid Tales . In: Rock Hard (Ed.): Best of Rock & Metal . Heel, Königswinter 2007, ISBN 978-3-89880-517-9 , pp. 172 .
  10. ^ A b Natalie J. Purcell: Death Metal Music: The Passion And Politics of a Subculture . McFarland, Jefferson, NC 2003, ISBN 0-7864-1585-1 , pp. 55 .
  11. ^ Ian Christe: Sound of the Beast , p. 111.
  12. ↑ Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann : Celtic Frost: Into the Pandemonium . In: Rock Hard (Ed.): Best of Rock & Metal . Heel, Königswinter 2007, ISBN 978-3-89880-517-9 , pp. 165 .
  13. ^ Ian Christe: Sound of the Beast. P. 226.
  14. ^ Natalie J. Purcell: Death Metal. P. 59
  15. ^ Matthias Mader: Paradise Lost - The last innovators . In: Iron Pages . 24, October / November, 1993, pp. 5 .
  16. ↑ Chart sources: DE CH