It has been a long time coming for me to read this book. CELTIC FROST appeared on my radar for the first time maybe 20 years after they abandoned HELLHAMMER as a project. They had a cool name and their singer called himself “Tom G. Warrior.” That was cool. It is cool. Imagining a new reality so powerful you need to rename yourself to go along with the vibe your band is creating. Just incredible self-belief and vision from social misfits. Good-looking, well-adjusted people can’t make music this important.
It’s difficult to make a recommendation about this book. I say that not because Fischer needed the careful eye of an editor, but more because the book is out of print (and expensive—I borrowed the Chicago Public Library's copy). Beyond that, the CELTIC FROST albums are so blatant in their intent that you do not really need a supplement such as this text in order to understand them fully. I also do not mean that the book itself is hard to recommend because it is bad per se. It’s more that the same ground has been covered more fully and carefully with Bazillion Points’ Only Death is Real from 2010. All of the incredible photos (again, think of the unwavering confidence and commitment involved!) from this era truly deserve hardcover 9" x 12" treatment and that book is the place to see them. Image is an indispensable part of CELTIC FROST’s appeal, and the tiny pictures in Are You Morbid? don’t do justice to the band’s sense of visual identity.
There are moments of wonder in these pages, such as when Fischer repeatedly catalogs the problem with Noise Records’ management of the project. After two EPs and an LP, Fischer wanted to grow the band beyond the thrash and speed metal scenes that they came from, but his reach exceeded his grasp (at least as far as Noise were concerned). It’s telling that he refers to the style the band plays as “heavy rock” instead of “metal” or some other subgenre. It’s not as though he's naïve in thinking he is NOT playing metal; he just sees it as more expansive than his label bosses and label mates do. His wide-ranging tastes in music and interesting choice of cover tunes (WALL OF VOODOO, BRYAN FERRY, DAVID BOWIE) make that clear. They apparently attempted PRINCE and ROXY MUSIC covers as well.
For someone who is conditioned to expect and accept being an outcast from most social situations, having the social graces and skills to navigate a rip-off label must have only made things more frustrating. The pain is evident as he explains in the first chapter, which recounts the recording of “Into the Pandemonium.” It’s clear he thinks of this record as the essential CELTIC FROST document. I’d say “Morbid Tales” is my favorite recording and “To Mega Therion” the most important, while “Into the Pandemonium” is the most… interesting (derogatory). As an aside, HELLHAMMER has never clicked for me, to the point that a friend insisted about 15 years ago that my dislike of them must have been informed by this book, but I’ve only read it now, in the past few weeks! HELLHAMMER’s influence and legacy cannot be disputed, nor can the fact that they do nothing for me. I don’t have an opinion on “Vanity / Nemesis” but I will go on record as saying that “Cold Lake” is not nearly as bad an album as its reputation suggests. Anyone who dislikes it must also not like the DICTATORS, CHEAP TRICK, or that band from Norway that has a racial slur in their name and plays with gender norms and rock clichés. It just plainly rocks and it’s a shame that it’s been deleted from the back catalog. Try this record with an open mind and you might even surprise yourself.
What really baffles me about the reception to “Cold Lake” is that it is seen as a departure for the band lyrically. In Ian Christe’s Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal, Fischer explained how “To Mega Therion” was “an expression of [his] own immaturity and male urgings.” He goes on to explain that “it’s made for people in puberty.” That view is even clearer with HELLHAMMER’s lyrical displays. There’s enough evidence in the bands’ catalogs for someone to write an article with a title like “From ‘Bloody Pussies’ to ‘Cherry Orchards,’ the Changing Same of Tom G. Warrior’s Views on Sexual Conquest” for a comparative studies journal. The lurid tales Fischer relates while recounting their U.S. tours further support a lustful state of mind. He and Martin Eric Ain (R.I.P.) did not drink or use drugs, so it seems more than likely that the episodes and escapades in these pages are accurate. For their last tour, Fischer acknowledges that the band and crew had been extremely lucky to have not contracted AIDS during previous debauched outings. Despite these hormonal compulsions, Fischer met a woman on the road that he felt close enough with to later marry.
The book itself is genuine and uncompromising, just like Fischer’s vision for the band. The most valuable parts of it include the exclusive and excessive endnotes, mostly for the explanations of the concepts for some of the records. I’ve bought (and sold) the recent LP reissues of “Morbid Tales” and “To Mega Therion” in the past six or seven years and I can’t remember this level of detail in the inserts. So this information must be unique. It’s a testament to Fischer et al.’s vision for the band that they would write such an in-depth concept for each album and song. To see these notes and then to think of how the inserts to the original pressings of some records involve ads for other bands’ records at the expense of the intended, extensive liner notes and you can understand why Fischer was so frustrated with the label. That’s the mood that permeates these pages—frustration—an unrealized potential through even their highest achievements. One wonders what the world would be like had Fischer’s iconoclastic vision been brought to full fruition. Still, the music we do have is worthy of scrutiny and is simply unique (complimentary).
No comments:
Post a Comment