Danse Macabre

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New Yorker Reed St Mark joined Celtic Frost as a permanent member in February 1985, replacing session drummer Stephen Priestly, and the trio recorded the ‘Emperor’s Return’ EP in April ‘85, at Noise’s request. Featuring the first recording of the essential ‘Circle Of The Tyrants’, the EP is a solid snapshot of the sheer fanaticism that was the lifeblood of Tom and Martin in particular. To Mega Therion” was CELTIC FROST‘s next album, recorded in September ’85. Due to personal difficulties, Martin was not in the band at that point, and so bass duties for the recording were carried out by session player Dominic Steiner. Martin‘s absence also meant that Tom was responsible for the music and virtually all of the lyrics. But despite difficult circumstances, the resulting album, however, was a triumph. Replete with iconic cover art by HR Giger, “To Mega Therion” imposes its dark majesty from the off with the orchestral bombast of “Innocence And Wrath”, before launching into the savagery of the hook-laden “The Usurper”. Daring, dark and superlatively heavy, “To Mega Therion” is a sophisticated expression of CELTIC FROST‘s inherent drive to eschew genre limitations and, instead, define art on their own terms. Even for a man as modest as he – at one point he refers to the band’s early efforts as “a ham-fisted copy of Venom”, frequently and incorrectly places himself as being less talented than any other musician you could name, and jokes that he’s disappointed we’re here to talk about his own music “as I was hoping we would be talking about the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal” – there’s a tangible point to this remark. I’m not overstating it when I say they hated it,” says Tom. “They hated every aspect of this album. And they let us know almost every day. I was mainly engaged in producing the album, as I wrote almost all of the music, and Martin was handling the phone calls, which wasn’t an easy job either. He was getting extreme negativity from Noise Records, threats that they’d cut the production, that they would withdraw the budget for the album, that they would send us home.”

In his village, he shows what he means when he says that musicians aren’t particularly well respected in his locale when says he continues to be asked, “Are you still unemployed?” Sadly, Martin Ain may no longer be with us, having passed away in 2017, but time has proved that the pair’s instincts and visions were right. The albums in Danse Macabre represent metal at its most urgent, its most creative, its best. It is what happens when people with nothing to lose but their own self-respect and artistic integrity go for broke, even when everything seems against you. Because it’s all you have. Into The Pandemonium" was the last recording made by this era of CELTIC FROST, bringing to an end a period of incredible creative and artistic growth over what was a remarkably brief period of time. That the teenagers who recorded "The Third Of The Storm" and "Triumph Of Death" for the HELLHAMMER EP would, despite constant turmoil, be recording the jaw-dropping "Rex Irae" just three years later is astonishing.Over the course of little more than three years between 1984 and 1987, CELTIC FROST established themselves as one of the most important bands in extreme and experimental music of that era. Due on October 28 in Europe and November 25 in the U.S., "Danse Macabre" brings together the band's recordings from those years, capturing their boundary-pushing ambition and creative zeal. Convinced, Noise asked CELTIC FROST to record a mini-LP, even though that hadn’t formed part of Warrior and Ain‘s concept document. Undeterred, and propelled by a burning urgency, CELTIC FROST set out to write and record a full-length LP in a matter of a few months. “Morbid Tales” was recorded with Horst Müller in Berlin and was unlike anything else. Intensely heavy, nuanced and experimental, the record was a radical musical statement of intent; a stunning synthesis of Warrior and Ain‘s disparate influences. From the furious opening riff of “Into The Crypts Of Rays” through to the avant-garde experimentation of “Danse Macabre”, “Morbid Tales” heralded the arrival of CELTIC FROST as a profoundly unique and uncompromising band. Just as then, today as a 59-year-old man and reluctant metal legend, Tom believes that music should be something without walls, without limits, a deep expression of its creator. With current band Triptykon, its’s a route he continues to take, brilliantly searching the shadows for ever-darker shades of music. Danse Macabre” captures the radical ambition and evolution of CELTIC FROST from 1984 through to 1987. In addition to the albums “Morbid Tales”, “To Mega Therion” and “Into The Pandemonium”, the marble color vinyl box set also includes the “Emperor’s Return”, “Tragic Serenades” and “I Won’t Dance” EPs, along with “The Collectors Celtic Frost” compilation, a 7″ of “Visual Aggression” and a cassette of rehearsals recorded at the band’s Grave Hill Bunker.

The pace is generally quite frenetic, but here are heavier and slower numbers like “Dethroned Emperor” which demonstrate the band’s willingness to keep their wings well spread. Emperor’s Return (1985) New wave that had arisen from punk was extremely ambitious,” he says. “Every time we would go to a record store and listen to a new wave album, there would be ideas we had never heard before. Every new wave album opened new horizons and showed you what was possible. And simply by that, it was extremely exciting, even if you didn't really like a particular album, you’d always go, ‘Wow, I never heard something like this before.’ To Mega Therion" was CELTIC FROST's next album, recorded in September '85. Due to personal difficulties, Martin was not in the band at that point, and so bass duties for the recording were carried out by session player Dominic Steiner. Martin's absence also meant that Tom was responsible for the music and virtually all of the lyrics. But despite difficult circumstances, the resulting album, however, was a triumph. Replete with iconic cover art by HR Giger, "To Mega Therion" imposes its dark majesty from the off with the orchestral bombast of "Innocence And Wrath", before launching into the savagery of the hook-laden "The Usurper". Daring, dark and superlatively heavy, "To Mega Therion" is a sophisticated expression of CELTIC FROST's inherent drive to eschew genre limitations and, instead, define art on their own terms. The better reception to the album was vindicating. Journalists – and here Tom gratefully notes Kerrang! writers Malcolm Dome, Xavier Russell, Paul Elliott and Dante Bonutto – began to understand that they wanted to be a different kind of metal band. Not only that, for the first time the band began playing live, making their London debut at the Hammersmith Palais.On paper, the story of Celtic Frost’s early years is as unlikely as it is extraordinary: a tale of how teenagers from rural Switzerland, at once audaciously ambitious and ferociously uncompromising, took heavy metal into new, exciting and unquestionably extreme territory. That they did so in the face of adversity at almost every turn makes this story even more incredible. The ambition exceeded the capabilities – by setting a goal that was almost unachievable, it forced us to go and achieve it,” he says now. “To work like maniacs to reach this. We had nothing else. We had nothing to lose. All bridges are burned, so all you have to do is go forward.” We hated these unwritten limitations in the metal scene,” he continues. “‘You cannot do this on an album, otherwise it's not metal…’ We thought, ‘Who writes these laws?’ Once we embarked on that path, Martin and I basically egged each other and continuously made each other more extreme in our endless discussions about these things. We just decided to abandon any restraint and not recognise any limits.”

On paper, the story of CELTIC FROST‘s early years is as unlikely as it is extraordinary: a tale of how teenagers from rural Switzerland, at once audaciously ambitious and ferociously uncompromising, took heavy metal into new, exciting and unquestionably extreme territory. That they did so in the face of adversity at almost every turn makes this story even more incredible.

Intro

On paper, the story of CELTIC FROST's early years is as unlikely as it is extraordinary: a tale of how teenagers from rural Switzerland, at once audaciously ambitious and ferociously uncompromising, took heavy metal into new, exciting and unquestionably extreme territory. That they did so in the face of adversity at almost every turn makes this story even more incredible. One of the first bands to follow in the rupturing aftermath of Venom’s first single and two albums, was Swiss metal group Celtic Frost. One of the reasons Celtic Frost came out of the traps so hard in 1984 was that Thomas Fischer and Martin Ain had already been part of a band where intent and passion far outstripped ability in the form of Hellhammer, a group hated so much by the international metal press that the aspirations of its main members were nearly crushed into inertia. Whether this was the fuel that propelled Celtic Frost or not (other potential power sources include an obvious emerging zeitgeist, geographical isolation from nearly all other metal groups and Fischer’s weird and unpleasant childhood), in three short years they would come to represent the best of the spirit of innovation in heavy metal during the mid-80s. Or they did to anyone paying attention at least. The early work of Swiss band Celtic Frost is among the most influential heavy metal of the 1980s. Now those recordings will be immortalized in the Danse Macabre box set, out November 25th in North America. To Mega Therion’ was Celtic Frost’s next album, recorded in September ‘85. Due to personal difficulties, Martin was not in the band at that point, and so bass duties for the recording were carried out by session player Dominic Steiner. Martin’s absence also meant that Tom was responsible for the music and virtually all of the lyrics. But despite difficult circumstances, the resulting album, however, was a triumph. Replete with iconic cover art by HR Giger, ‘To Mega Therion’ imposes its dark majesty from the off with the orchestral bombast of ‘Innocence And Wrath’, before launching into the savagery of the hook-laden ‘The Usurper’. Daring, dark and superlatively heavy, ‘To Mega Therion’ is a sophisticated expression of Celtic Frost’s inherent drive to eschew genre limitations and, instead, define art on their own terms.

Over the course of little more than three years between 1984 and 1987, CELTIC FROST established themselves as one of the most important bands in extreme and experimental music of that era. Due on October 28 in Europe and November 25 in the U.S., “Danse Macabre” brings together the band’s recordings from those years, capturing their boundary-pushing ambition and creative zeal. The first Celtic Frost record, Morbid Tales, was ferocious and extreme. The second, To Mega Therion, was a huge step forward. But the third, Into the Pandemonium, was the landmark – a dark and beautiful set that sounded like nothing else and confronted closed-minded metal fans by opening with a cover of Wall of Voodoo’s new wave hit Mexican Radio. Even the band name had been intended as a break from metal convention.He was another outsider in Switzerland,” says Tom. “And of course, the Hollywood thing only came after years of struggle, where he too was pushed into the underground for a long time. Because he was doing dark art that one doesn’t do. I think the level on which he connected to us was because he discovered some parallels in the struggle and in the origin of what we were creating. So this into went to the street, and there was a huge period of youth unrest in Zurich,” he remembers. “The establishment first reacted by sending the police with rubber bullets and tear gas. There were severe injuries. It was basically the establishment waging a civil war against the young people. And that’s the environment during which Hellhammer was formed.” The remarkable music Celtic Frost made between 1984 and 1987 is now gathered together in a massive box set – heavy both literally and musically – called Danse Macabre. Even now, it sounds more current than almost all other metal from that era. It displays the first crystallisation of extreme metal, where the sense of formal experimentation is every bit as important as grinding riffs. It still sounds brutally, thrillingly alive. Instead, Tom says they tried to sabotage production. When the label came to the studio to hear what the band had done, they told them in no uncertain terms: “Nobody is going to buy this piece of shit. Can you record an album like Exodus or Slayer?” As punishment, financial support for touring was cancelled, as was a planned video shoot with legendary British filmmaker Ken Russell. They changed their tune when the album was (correctly) hailed as a visionary artistic statement and began to sell, but by this point the band had parted ways with the label, and Tom says “the experience basically destroyed us”.