I was overthinking music again and came to the realization that, at least to my strangely-wired brainpan, Celtic Frost's 1987 album Into the Pandemonium and 1349's 2009 album Revelations of the Black Flame have a lot more in common that I once might have thought. After hearing ItP discussed in an interview not long ago, I started thinking about this and Revelations and started to see more things.
Kind of. In abstract sort of way.
Despite coming out nearly twenty years apart, after time, growth, and my own musical maturity, I was able to see interesting connections here that I didn't before. Maybe not literal ones, but just that these two albums have some things in common that I couldn't appreciate until a bit later on(or I just started looking at things from non-Euclidian angles for some reason.)
They sound quite different; the similarities aren't in the actual sounds of the albums, necessarily. Revelations of the Black Flame is still 1349 and has its brutal sound, Frost's relentless double bass, and other things they're known for, and Celtic Frost still has Tom's harsh vocals and trademark 'Ugh!', which if you know anything about Celtic Frost, you will know the 'Ugh.' If you don't, this particular blog is going to confuse the hell out of you, but before it does that, just know Tom G. Warrior has a very trademark "UGH."
Okay okay, I'll go into a brief history of CF to prevent such confusion. Celtic Frost was part of what generally gets nicknamed "The 1st wave of Black Metal." These are typically bands from the very late 70s to early 80s that went on to influence a lot of the 2nd wave of black metal(the stuff from Norway, and, well, everywhere else.) It's not black metal as you might know it, but often 'darker versions of some genres at the time.' Bathory, for example, was probably the most black-sounding, but had a lot of thrash influence. Sodom started out as more of a black/thrash combo before moving onto their more classic Teutonic thrash sound. Venom was a very dark version of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal(N.W.O.B.H.M. as its usually seen abbreviated to.) Mercyful Fate was a very dark and satanic version of what really was classic heavy metal. (Note that 1st wave black metal is different from OG Heavy metal like Sabbath, Priest, and other 70s bands, who were the influencers for like, ALL of it, but I digress. I'm just speaking a bit about the early extreme bands.)
Then we had Celtic Frost, heavily inspired by Discharge and other D-beat hardcore punk at the time, with its driving, trademark beat and dark punkish sound on their first two albums(moreso on their Morbid Tales EP.) They were formed from the ashes of the band Hellhammer, who by the time they split, were already 2/3rds of Celtic Frost(Tom G. Warrior and the late Martin Eric Ein.)
Okay, so with that brief background out of the way, know that Celtic Frost's original stuff sounded like dark, more brutal, hardcore D-beat inspired music. Very straightforward; To Mega Therion did branch out some more, getting even darker sounding than Morbid Tales, but still very raw. You can go check them out online; they're available anywhere.
But then came Into the Pandemonium, and with that, instead of another more straightforward, punkish(like Morbid Tales) or punkish-groovy(like To Mega Therion), it has some stranger aspects. There's some orchestration, cleaner vocals mixed in with the rough, some female vocals, breakdowns...there's still those Celtic Frosts riffs in play, but the album is, for the best term I can use, "experimental" in many ways. For one, it opens with a cover of Mexican Radio. Yes, *that* Mexican Radio. From Wall of Voodoo, released in 1982, and not a song you'd expect Celtic Frost to cover. It was indeed a metal version, and a groovy one at that, but man, coming off of Hellhammer's stuff and Celtic Frost's early stuff, I wasn't really sure where it was going.
Really, I feel like this was Celtic Frost showing that they had grown musically quite a bit from their previous albums in their way.
Now 1349 needs I think less introduction in terms of metal history; they are a 2nd wave Norwegian black metal band, known a whole lot for being the musical equivalent of being lit on fire and beaten to death with a bag of hammers. Put on Hellfire and you will hear exactly what I mean. They've consisted of vocalist Ravn, guitarist Archaon, bassist Seidemann, and drummer Frost(yes, the same one from Satyricon and, in the '90s and '00s, a billion other bands. He was a very in-demand drummer at the time. he still probably is, but just sticks to his main bands nowadays) for a long time now. They previously had a 2nd guitarist Tjalve, but he stepped out of the band after Hellfire, and they've been a four-piece ever since. (They have had an incredibly stable lineup, though, especially for black metal. Besides Tjalve leaving, they had one change back in their demo days, and that's it. Typically, this is a genre where a band's lineup is measured in Planck units instead of years before they swap members.)
I mentioned how I started to feel how Revelations of the Black Flame has some strange things in common with Into the Pandemonium(indeed, this is the reason why I decided to write this blog-article-thing.) While Maggot Fetus...Teeth like Thorns is probably the closest to what one might expect from 1349(it is an incredible song, too!) it's not quite as fast as some of their typical previous songs(which were generally far more blistering.) It's got an almost galloping beat that goes with some intricate yet still fast double bass and blastbeats in there. It's a 'pit song' for sure, but they do add more layers to it. But then there are other interesting tracks; Uncreation is a seven-minute-long(note: 1349 is no stranger to long songs), mid-tempo atmospheric affair, and Serpentine Sibilance is a dark and grinding, also mid-tempo song that the rhythm section carries in a primal way.
There are musical interludes as well, in between the songs. Creepy, actually somewhat freakishly demonic sounding interludes adding more to the atmosphere. And "atmosphere" really comes out here, from the production down to songs themselves, it feels more like a ritual sometimes than their previous albums where their goal was to seemingly administer savage beatings through music.
I would say Into the Pandemonium took me a bit less time to really sink in, but it still took it awhile to move up the list for me. As someone who just could not really get Cold Lake or Vanity/Nemesis(the latter just doesn't make me feel anything, and, well, the band even denies Cold Lake, lol), for awhile my fav Celtic Frost albums were, well, To Mega Therion(a top 5 of all time for me!) and Morbid Tales, with Into the Pandemonium after those. Then 2006's Monotheist came out and was one of the finest 'final albums' from a band before their split that I've heard, and that album eventually became my 2nd favorite Celtic Frost, due to its absolutely stifling, heavy evil atmosphere.
But then one day(I forget when it was, it happened quite a long time ago), ItP kinda clicked hard with me; I think it may have actually been after Tuska 2006 and not even that long after Monotheist dropped. And you know something, the more I think about this, I don't know if we would've gotten that stiflingly evil album of Monotheist if Celtic Frost *hadn't* decide to go experiment the way they did on ItP.
I think I thought to write about it NOW, nearly 20 years after the fact, because I started to see those similarities with Revelations and I started to line it up. I wanted to know why I felt that way about the albums the first times I heard them. It wasn't youth(I was 31 when Revelations came out), but perhaps my tastes in the 2000s and before were a little more hardline(as many can be when they are younger in a scene.)
1349 was, at least at the time for me, a very big left turn. Maybe a bit too much for me at first. Hellfire is often seen as their magnum opus(and for good reason, I do think it's their magnum opus.) It took everything they learned from the previous two albums, added excellent production value, even more blasts and crushing sound. Hellfire is one of the most brutal black metal albums around and often even offered up as "Essential Listening" for those who like their black metal on the harsh, unforgiving, and brutal side. But I also think the experimenting they did on Revelations did actually allow them to add some more grooves and atmosphere to their later albums, as well. The more I think about it, after Hellfire, I'm not sure how much nastier they could've gotten. I feel like they perfected that sound with that album, and perhaps really had to go somewhere else, lest they just release Hellfire II. And while Hellfire II might have sounded awesome, would Hellfire III? Or IV? I'm not so sure. I can't blame the band for not wanting to be one-note.
But the more I listened, I mentioned I saw those similarities. Experimental albums, both of which swapped previous styles for something different(yet not complete departures.) Both include some very strange cover song picks, between Mexican Radio and Set Controls For the Heart of the Sun(Pink Floyd, if you didn't know.) Revelations went for a very dark, more stifling atmosphere, Pandemonium went for some more groovy metal sound(though with it's own eerie interludes. Both in ways somewhat challenging to get into if you come at it from the wrong angle, almost like trying to line up a shot in the wind. Come at it head on, and you're going to get blown off course, but approach it from a different angle, and it might hit that bull's eye.
Oh yeah, they both involve Tom G. Warrior, amusingly enough. Did I mention he was one of the producers on Revelations? Now I have. So there's that tie-in, which I do find pretty interesting and awesome, as well.
I do feel they share that other aspect of "Peaking with their previous sound." To Mega Therion I think was the summit and crowning achievement of the original Celtic Frost sound(which had advanced from Hellhammer, remember), and Hellfire perfected 1349's "set on fire and murdered in a dark alley with hammers" sound. While CF would continue experimenting(perhaps not that successfully until the monumentally good Monotheist, which just nailed everything), 1349 would start mixing what they learned from Revelations with their unforgiving, brutal sound and start creating even more layered albums that were nonetheless journeys in lightning fast percussion and crushing guitars, only with more atmosphere this time.( FWIW, 2019's The Infernal Pathway is my 2nd favorite album of theirs, which I feel like really did capture the brutality, speed and the evil atmosphere pretty perfectly.)
I also think they're interesting in that neither album necessarily became a favorite from either band for me. This isn't a story of "Now these albums are my favorites," but "I 'get them' so much more now and really enjoy them for what they are because I examined them under a new light."
ItP, again, I'd rate third(not bad for a band with only 6 albums), and I do probably put Revelations at the end of 1349's discography, BUT I appreciate what they did on the albums, a lot more these days. I can genuinely say 1349 has an 'all good' discography if someone asks me, where some years back I'd have said 'You could probably ignore Revelations.' Now, I would suggest that folks actually give it a listen. Hell, if their other stuff is too fast and brutal, or if Celtic Frost's first couple of albums are too raw and punkish, it may be these albums might click with you more for all I know.
So...yeah. This wasn't so much a review of play-by-play of each album(I wasn't planning on it to be exactly that), but for those who haven't listened to them yet, you can listen for yourself and make your own decisions. Perhaps if you're from the outside you might not hear the weird similar aspects; if anything I almost feel like this is me overthinking music again like I am wont to do.
'Til next time, when we'll see what I talk about next(and when that might be!)
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