Pazartesi 29 Eyl 2008, 0:04

Celtic Frost / Circle of the Tyrants / To Mega Therion (6) / Oct 1985

As autumn is upon us, and we finish September and head into October, 'tis the witching season for me: my personal peak season for the heaviest of metal! All this week, I'll be highlighting a few of the most defining tracks from black metal, and more recent offshoots of pagan metal and Viking metal!

During the golden era of thrash metal, the roots of black metal began bearing wicked fruit in Britain (Venom), Sweden (Bathory), and - far removed from any real music scene, not to mention any kind of metal environment - in Switzerland, with Hellhammer.

The eccentric brainchild of Thomas Gabriel Fischer a/k/a Tom G. Warrior, Hellhammer released one EP, Apocalyptic Raids, which had less-than-stellar production and "emerging" songcraft. This version of Fischer's group split up only three months later, but forging ahead with bassist Martin Eric Ain, they formed Celtic Frost, releasing Morbid Tales the same year.

It was a big improvement over the Hellhammer sound, but they hit their masterpiece with To Mega Therion ("The Great Beast", see Revelation 13:1). It was completely different than anything else that was coming out at the time. Being both unique and very dark in subject matter (H.P. Lovecraft, Aleister Crowley, the by-now usual subjects but mostly alien at the time…), even Satanic-themed artwork by H.R. Giger, it had a deep and lasting effect on the development of death metal and especially black metal. This album was even a vast improvement over the debut album, with a more complex and theatrical sound, even with orchestral accompaniment and deep Wagnerian brass elements.

Today's selection is both the highlight of the album and quite possibly the band's single greatest recording. It's progressive thrash metal (sometimes ridiculously fast) with a neoclassical influence (dirgelike slow), and features strange dissonant guitar solos, implying some sort of sonic mindscape representing madness induced from evil horrors to maddening for the mind to comprehend. Basically, it does far more in the typical 4-5 minutes than most all of the other bands could possibly do at the time.

Even if black metal is not your typical favored sound, you must give this classic track a listen.

Also of interest: Opeth covered this, and their version can be found on the 2000 reissue of My Arms, Your Hearse.

\m/ (ò_ó) \m/