'Hugely Negative Reviews'

CELTIC FROST - Cold Lake

Noise International 1988

Back in the 80's when Metal was still a new-ish and evolving form of rock, kids like me were VERY protective of our favorite bands. So when these bands lost the plot, or worse, you'd take it as a personal betrayal. My first experience with this was Motley Crüe's 'Theater of Pain'. I had just turned 14, spending Christmas with a Group Home councilor in Vermont surrounded by strangers and deathly ill with the worst case of strep throat I've ever had. I got one gift and it was the new Crüe. Gone were the pentagrams and zombie drag queen art / fashion, replaced with creams and pink hued graphics and the band looked like fucking CLOWNS now. They used to look gross, now they just looked stupid. Embarrassing even. The music inside was as bad as the imagery hinted at, I mean, it was like a completely different band. No balls, speed, violence, HOOKS, nothing from the prior two records. They did a classic rock cover with Brownsville Stations dated, corny-ass 'Smokin' In The Boys Room'!! 'Home Sweet Home'? I was DEVASTATED. I pulled the cassette out of the boom box and fucking SNAPPED IT IN HALF. How could they do this to me???

That was the worst. It's happened plenty of times since but I had already gone through it, so I was able to take it better. I mean, I was still disgusted when I heard 'Enter Sandman' for the first time ('Off To Never-Never Land' anyone?) , but it didn't send me into an existential crisis like 'Theater of Pain' did.

Still, some records are sooo unbelievable, the confusion could become overwhelming.

When Celtic Frost released 'Into The Pandemonium' in 1987, it was, for me, a "HOLY SHIT" record like 'Reign In Blood' or 'My War' were. Following Voivod's mind-blowing 'Killing Technology' it seemed like thrash metal's horizons were wide open. Adding strings, operatic female vocals, and electronics, Celtic Frost were on the cutting edge of thrash metal, you could trust anything they did from here on, right? Imagine the shock to their fan base when they followed it up with 'Cold Lake'.

Have you heard this fuckin' record???

'Cold Lake' is, perhaps, one of the WORST Metal records EVER. I still have no clue as to how Tom G. Warrior thought this was his ticket to the big leagues, and YES, I've read 'Are You Morbid?' and the answer just ain't there. I mean, I'm sure the reasoning was sound for a metal act (as Motley Crüe undoubtedly figured out):

"Well, guys, it's a packed house AGAIN!"

"Yep. Packed full of dudes."

Pube 'stachioed fan rushes up.

"DUDE! YOU GUYS FUCKING ROCK! I WOULD KILL MY FUCKIN' GRANDMOTHER FOR YOU, DUDE- JUST SAY THE WORD!!"

"I'm thinking there must be a way out of this..."

So Tom and the boys (oh yeah, the real band quit before this shitstorm rolled into town, replaced by pouty lipped poodle hairs) put away the leather and corpse paint and went wardrobe shopping at the Gap. Then Tom tried writing songs he thought chicks on the Sunset Strip would like, but he's so terminally European the lyrical results are even more pretentious than 'Pandemonium's and that's saying something.

Contrary to the load of crap that is the 'Cold Lake' Wiki entry (where I nicked this posts goofy title), musically all the tunes sound like old Celtic Frost tracks in patent leather pumps (except 'Human', a, ahem, 'rap' song). I mean, Celtic Frost work within a certain musical vocabulary, a set of signifiers if you will. These are all present, so the idea that Oliver Amberg wrote these tracks is total bullshit (not to mention the book claims that he was uselessly drunk for the majority of the session). Tom even uses his trademark 'WHO!' and 'HEY!' barks, but his delivery is TOTALLY RETARDED. He whines his way through the entire album, like that's going to be all it takes to get some women to buy his record. It's even worse than the comparable and equally bizarre 'Grave New World' by Discharge. Okay, maybe that's pushing it, but still...

And just when you think things can't get any more unappealing, guitar wizard Oliver Amberg's stink flower solos come swooping in, seemingly composed in a vacuum. I swear they just don't match the songs in any way. It's crazy!

AND CHECK OUT THESE OUTFITS!!!



WHAT THE FUUUUUCCKKK??



LOOK OUT JON BON JOVI, HERE COMES TOM BON G WOVI!



Good Sweet lord... This record is so fucked that I actually traded 'Vanity / Nemesis' to Greg King for it and although I never make it through the whole record, I'm glad I did.



VOIVOD - RRRÖÖÖAAARRR

Noise International 1986

It's hard to believe that Voivod - one of the most respected and influential Metal bands ever - were initially regarded as talentless morons. Well, RRRÖÖÖAAARRR goes a long, LONG way in explaining why that would be. Now, let's be clear, to most of the readers of SLN, myself included, this record is gold. I LOVE THIS RECORD. But in the world of thrash metal circa 1986, it was like listening to a bunch of amateurs struggle their way through a set of ill defined 'songs'. I remember thinking "These guys have no clue how to tune their guitars".

It's funny, all of the things they would employ a year later to great effect on the groundbreaking 'Killing Technology', is here, but all at once. The off kilter Brian Egeness (Die Kreuzen) / Frippian guitar spasms of Dennis 'Piggy' D'Amour, the whammy bar enhanced 'Blower Bass' of Jean-Yves 'Blacky' Thériault, Michel 'Away' Langevin's pounding circular drumming and Denis 'Snake' Bélanger's yammering and unique take on English. They're all there and all at the same time, all the time. The record never lets up. It's just 'THRASH!THRASH!THRASH!THRASH!THRASH!' 8 seconds of silence into guitar or drum intro and 'THRASH!THRASH!THRASH!THRASH!THRASH!'

The production is so awful, you find yourself wondering how it was allowed out of the studio. Unlike 99.999% Metal records released since 1970, RRRÖÖÖAAARRR isn't guitar dominated, but drum and vocal dominated. The rhythm guitar ends up dueling with the 'Blower Bass' for face time in the spaces between snare whacks, only rising to the surface for barely controlled and truncated solos.

So, yeah, it sounds bit closer to 80's J-Core than the Canadian Progressive Metal Juggernaut they became famous as, and is deserving of a place in any thrash / hardcore fans archive.

BUILD YOUR LINKS IN THE COMMENTS SECTIIIIOOOONN!!