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Class 6(66)

Celtic Frost: Into the pandemonium

02/04/10  ||  Khlysty

Introduction

According to John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, Pandemonium –or, more correctly, Pandæmonium- is the capital city of Hell and, supposedly looks something like this. Don’t know ‘bout you, but me, I ain’t so sure I would like to go into this place; at least, not unarmed and without massive quantities of booze and other controlled substances. Seems, though that our great friends from Switzerland, the impeccable Celtic Frost, decided that it would be a great place to explore, while looking for inspiration for following the generally great “To Mega Therion” – or, more correctly, “Το Μέγα Θηρίον”.

So, armed with Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and, most probably, with Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” –plus a shitload a brewskies- they entered the Gates of Hell, moved through its different circles and knocked on Pandemonium’s doors. An irate Belial answered and, when informed of the guys’ reason to be there, kindly told them to fuck off and shut the door on their faces. But out heroes were stubborn assholes and continued knocking until a less irate Beelzebub opened them doors and accepted the reasoning for this invasion. Alas, the Prince of Hell had already made a plan that would render their adventure pretty useless. See, when accepting Celtic Frost into the Pandemonium, he “forgot” to give them the special “visitors only” shades that would allow them to view Hell’s capital in all its hideous glory but, at the same time, filter the visions enough to make them comprehensible for the puny mind of humans. So…

Songwriting

6,5. …So, while the band members wallowed in Hell’s most atrocious spectacles, their minds overloaded with depravity and hatred beyond human comprehension. Their synapses started mixing up the messages they received, producing a creative farrago, where sights, sounds, textures and inspiration became a tangled, hopelessly unsolvable Gordian knot. After a while, our heroes decided to leave Pandemonium and Hell and try to turn their experience into a record representative of its magnitude. And, well, THEY FUCKING COULD NOT! Everything was mixed up. Everything was tangled and whenever they tried to find a loose end and start untangling the whole mess, everything became more complex, more incomprehensible, more hellish. After a while, our heroes despaired: their whole endeavor was in danger of going to total waste and their minds were on the verge of collapsing.

So, as a last resort, they decided to work with only the fragments that they could decipher out of the tangled mass of their experience. Boy, was that a BAAAAD decision! With only fragmentary glimpses of the total experience to work with the music slowly but irreversibly went all over the place. When the fragments were large enough, the focus in the songwriting department was much stronger and the results were interesting and, sometimes, brilliant; but when the fragments were small, the experience was turned into something hideous: either a distorted view of the sight they had seen, or an incomplete version of something bigger that remained forever elusive. And as the work painfully progressed the bandmembers knew that their goal was doomed from the get-go. Actually…

Production

8. …Actually, they were so mixed up that they couldn’t even make heads or tails from what they were trying –and failing- to achieve. So, they tried to use technology, to mash up everything into something that would speak of at least a modicum of rationality and homogeneity. Using advanced –some say, also, occult- recording techniques, Celtic Frost tried to harness the total chaos of their work under a uniform-sounding record. This, they achieved. But, to what avail, no-one really knows. See…

Guitars

6,5. …See, while fighting with the tangled visions of Hell that their short-circuited minds produced, the band lost its main ingredient, the element that had made them legends and had given them the gall to knock on Hell’s doors: the snarling, spitting, riff-producing guitar sound of their past effort. In here, the guitar seems to be relegated into a secondary instrument, with only a few instances when it enters stage-right and conquers. The mixed-up visions the band conjured seemed to lack the tendency to demand a great guitar presence and only when the focus of the band became clear and spot-on, did the instrument rise over the pianos, orchestral interludes, ballads and electro-dub “experiments” that the band produced. Moreover…

Vocals

4,5. …Moreover, Thomas Gabriel Fisher Warrior seemed to have lost his ability to snarl-spit lyrics and to produce ripples in the stale pond of metal with his trademarked “ughs” and “ohs”. Instead, he seemed only to want to croon in a trembly almost-falsetto about loves lost and sad moons and other things of total gayness. There’s a lot of people out there, who are in the know and who believe that, besides the trick that Beelzebub played with all the members of the band, he specially hexed Thomas, maybe to punish him for arrogance, maybe just for the fuck of it. These people point out the few times that his vocals retain their earlier venom and sadly shake their heads and make mysterious signs with their fingers, as if to ward off an unspeakable evil. At the same time…

Bass

4,5. …At the same time, one of this people, who decided to speak anonymously to GD, pointed out that Martin Ain, the prodigal son who had missed the band’s previous recorded effort, here tries to shine and sometimes succeeds. But the band’s Pollock-like songwriting never allows him enough time to deliver his stellar bass-playing, thus emasculating the band’s sound and leaving it without the bottom-end that would have made the songs more coherent. This person…

Drums

5,5. …This person also pointed out how Reed St. Mark seems always distracted and always less powerful than in previous efforts of the band. When GD told him that in this record Celtic Frost seemed less interested in creating a solid backbeat, the person just shook its head sadly and underlined again the fact that the band was so messed up that nothing would surprise anyone. Not even…

Lyrics

3. …Not even the atrocious lyrics displayed here. Yes, sure, lyrics was never Celtic Frost’s strong point. But, “ This evening the moon dreams more lazily/As some fair woman, lost in cushions deep/With gentle hand caresses listlessly/The contour of her breasts before she sleeps/On velvet backs of avalanches soft” … Gimme a break. It seems, though…

Cover art

10. …It seems, though, that the band had at least one clear, totally lucid moment. That was when they picked as the cover of the record the Hell panel of Hieronymus Bosch’ “Garden of Earthly Delights” triptych. Maybe it was a moment when everything became untangled in their minds or maybe…

Logo

9. …Or maybe it was the visual part of the whole procedure that allowed them to focus. Again, when the time came to stamp the record as their own, Celtic Frost chose their old, classic, totally recognizable logo. It was a last vestige to a reality and a past that was slowly fading away, as Pandemonium was taking them over inch by inch. So…

Booklet

-. …So, the band was moving towards sad waters. If they had anything to say, I’m not in a position of knowing since I only have the picture disk of the record, which contains no written material. But…

Overall and ending rant

…But, I’m sure that Celtic Frost, after finishing this record, came face to face with what they had done. After a while, Martin Ain left the band, some say to try and find a way to cleanse himself from Pandemonium’s nasty effects. St. Mark followed right after and Thomas was left alone to fight, not only with the blasphemous piece of music that he had created with this record, but with Hell’s influence over him. I won’t go into the details of his Purgatory. So, to wrap things up, this is one record that fully displays the satanic effects of arrogance and uncontrollable ambition. It has moments of pure brilliance, but it’s also choke-full of fragmentary songwriting, hideous music and a feeling of being all over the place. I’m sure that the Lords of Pandemonium had a great time when they first listened to it…

6

  • Information
  • Released: 1987
  • Label: Noise Records
  • Website: www.celticfrost.com
  • Band
  • Thomas Gabriel Fisher: vocals, guitar, keyboards
  • Martin Ain: bass
  • Reed St. Mark: drums
  • Tracklist
  • 01. Mexican radio (Wall of Voodoo cover)
  • 02, Mesmerized
  • 03. Inner sanctum
  • 04. Tristesses de la lune
  • 05. Babylon feel (Jade serpent)
  • 06. Caress into oblivion
  • 07. One in their pride (porthole mix)
  • 08. I won’t dance
  • 09. Sorrows of the moon
  • 10. Rex irae (Requiem)
  • 11. Oriental masquerade
  • 12. One in their pride (re-entry mix)

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