Ugggh!! Heeeey!

VARIOUS - In Memory of Celtic Frost (1996)

As Ye shouldst know by now, tribute/covers albums are dicey propositions at best. You can count yer damn self lucky if there happens to be one or two heartfelt renderings of tuneage ya hold dear. Worst of all, there's always at least some jackoff hipster band that decides to be all "clever" and do a disrespectful "interpretation." Y'know, those oh-so yawn-inducing "lounge arrangements" and the like. But believe me when I tell you that this here collection actually fucking works. The bands involved have undoubted passion for the material, and they've obviously been heavily inspired by Frost & Hellhammer-- and that's coming from someone who thinks of Tom G. & Co's early works as a listening experience bordering on religion. For over two decades now... fuck I'm old.


Thee Culprits:


1 Morgion - Innocence and Wrath / The Usurper
2 Enslaved - Procreation (of the Wicked)
3 Slaughter - Dethroned Emperor
4 Mayhem - Visual Aggression
5 Inner Thought - Morbid Tales
6 Sadistic Intent - Return to the Eve
7 Cianide - Dawn of Meggido
8 Divine Eve - Visions of Mortality
9 Grave - Mesmerized
10 Apollyon Sun - Babylon Fell
11 Opeth - Circle of the Tyrants
12 Closedown - Danse Macabre

Note: Be sure to stick around for thee two hidden bonuses-- Wimp...er...Emperor's take on "Massacra," and all-femme sludge outfit 13's version of "Triumph of Death."

In comments.

Kick to Kill

TEST DEPT. - Beating the Retreat (1984)


Being a New World Man of thee Kanück Mütt persuasion, I have little to no grasp of the British class system. As far as I can figger-- at least where it is applied to underground musicians-- is that one should be "working class," not speak with a "posh accent" and for thee Love of Lucifer: no fooking way can you have attended a school where the tuition exceeds a few hundred pounds. Also I've duly noted that British folks sho' like to yammer on about it-- especially Oi! bands and Ray Davies.

A lovely British um... "bird" once explained to me that Test Dept. were a hyper-liberal bunch whose songs tackled much of what I failed to understand above, even going so far as to collaborate with a Miner's Union Choir in support of their strike of 1984-- (at least I think that was the gist of it... she had a really heavy accent) and here I thought their lyrics were nothing more than monosyllabic utterances of cathartic rage. I mean, what was I supposed to think? These New Cross, London blokes used discarded hunks of scrap metal from local factories to create a pulverizing form of musique concrete that has since become the soggy, pre-packaged rebellion known as industrial music. Luckily, they sound nothing like the tripe the kids think is all "heavy" n' shit like Marilyn and Two-Inch Male (bet those guys went to Ivy League schools). Nope. Here's where the sheep get separated from the goats, matey. Ya got drill bits spinnin' into yer skull and tribal beats that sound like they were pounded out on the lids of barrels of toxic waste.

In comments.


CORONER - Death Cult Demo (1986)

{First off, inspiration for this entry goes to the lovely & talented Mogo for his recent post of this here band's "No More Color" LP}

Switzerland has given us quality, if not quantity-- ya got chocolate, watches, cheese, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, Fear of God, Messiah, Samael before they went all techno-wimp, Jack & the Rippers, Negativ, Sperma, Glueams, garage-punk heroes the Sevens and a handful of hardcore bands I'm not in the mood to type right now. Oh... and these guys. Hailing from Zürich, Coroner would become renowned as virtuosos of thee highest order for thee bewildering complexity of LP's like "Mental Vortex" and the aforementioned "No More Color." In 1986 however, they were still primitive thrashers not unlike countrymen Hellhammer whose Tom G. Warrior provides the vocals for this here demo. The sound quality is crisp, and has that most excellent farty bass sound lovers of metal demo tapes have grown to love (or at least I have). Best of all, of the six tracks featured here, only "Spiral Dream" was ever given the full studio treatment (on their debut album).

Track list:

1. Spectators of Sin
2. Spiral Dream
3. Aerial Combat
4. The Invincible
5. Arrogance in Uniform*
6. Hate, Fire, Blood*

* = bonus tracks featuring Ron "Royce" Broder on vox.

In the comments.

'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!!