Celtic Frost To Mega Therion CD

Celtic Frost: Reed St. Mark, Tom G. Warrior, Dominic Steiner.
Recorded at Casablanca Studio, Berlin, Germany in September 1985.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
Celtic Frost: Thomas Gabriel Warrior (vocals, guitar, sound effects); Reed St. Mark (vocals, drums, timpani, percussion); Wolf Bender (French horn); Dominic Steiner, Martin Eric Ain (bass guitar).
Additional personnel: Claudia-Maria Mokri (vocals); Horst Muller, Urs Sprenger (sound effects).
Already boasting one of the greatest metal names ever, Celtic Frost easily achieved infamy with their classic 1985 release, TO MEGA THERION, a statement of heaviness still unsurpassed by anyone in death metal. For their sophomore album, Switzerland's favorite sons-- guitarist/vocalist Tom Warrior and bassist Martin Eric Ain--along with newly recruited American percussionist Reed St. Mark, honed their collective vision: a unique marriage of dark sludge, lightning riffs, classical operatics, and lyrics culled from the darkest depths of European mythology.
Taken from a Greek translation from Revelations meaning "Beast," the album's title is only the beginning of the pain. "Circle of the Tyrants" rides like a war chariot on the relentless pulse of St. Mark's bass drum; Warrior's circular riffing on the ironically named "Eternal Summer" conjures up Biblical hellfire raining from the sky; and the jarring sound effects and moans of the damned on "Tears in a Prophet's Dream" bring the listener closer to the forge of the gods than Jimmy Page ever did. While the bombast remains an integral part of the Celtic Frost experience, the band--for the most part--keeps the focus on riffs and songs, making TO MEGA THERION their definitive platter.
The bombastic "Innocence and Wrath" starts To Mega Therion off on just the appropriate note -- Wagnerian horn lines, booming drums, and a slow crunch toward apocalypse. Nobody can say Tom Warrior and his merry men don't know how to make the end of the world sound appropriately dramatic. With that setting the tone, it's into the maddeningly wild and woolly Celtic Frost universe full bore, Warrior roaring out his vocals with glee and a wicked smile while never resorting to self-parodic castrato wails. "The Usurper" alone is worth the price of admission, an awesome display of Warrior's knack around brute power and unexpectedly memorable riffs. It isn't so much headbanging as body-slamming that Celtic Frost are after here. While there's not a lot of variety throughout Therion -- everything is mostly as already indicated, big, loud, and invoking death and storm clouds conjured up by pagan gods -- what does crop up outside the formula makes a good experience even better. Mostly that's got to do with the subtle touches the band buries in the mix -- wailing noises, chanting choirs, and more than once an actual sense of space and echo, like the group is really thundering down from the Alps. The contrast of a brief operatic aria and groaning demon voice behind Warrior on "Circle of the Tyrants," right before leading into a mind-blowingly powerful full-on band assault, is one such prime moment. Other prime cuts in general include the perfectly titled "Dawn of Megiddo" -- can't get any better than that, really! -- the shadowy instrumental mood-out "Tears in a Prophet's Dream," and "Eternal Summer," which makes such a prospect seem like the last thing on earth one would want. Ending on another prime note, the hyperdramatic "Necromantical Screams," To Mega Therion is and remains death metal at its finest. ~ Ned Raggett