Danse Macabre

Product Information

The release encompasses Celtic Frost’s early material from 1984 to 1987 and includes the band’s classic albums alongside a handful of rarities and goodies. As such, this review is essentially my very first exposure to their music (aside from unwittingly hearing “Circle of the Tyrants” on Obituary’s Cause of Death and not knowing it was a cover). Number one, we were a small underground band originally, and we never thought that anybody would still talk about this; Hellhammer or Celtic Frost 40 years later, or on a global basis.

Into The Pandemonium is one of those rare albums that entirely lives up to its name, a thing of such shifting and seismic beauty, it’s almost still impossible to get a true handle on it, marking Celtic Frost out as not just a band ahead of their time but also one ahead of their space. The real important factor here, however, is not what metal looked like or even what its subject matter was, but that it was engaged in a process of breaking away from mainstream rock all the way through the 1970s and gearing up for a decade in which it consistently created sounds that had never been heard before. One ingrained narrative of the modernist 1980s is that music slumped midway through the decade, with all of the creative verve that powered post punk sedated until acid house culture livened things up once again. In 1970, the heavy blues rock group Black Sabbath, on the title track of their eponymous debut album, create the template for what will eventually be recognised as a doom metal song; on subsequent albums they craft other important templates while remaining, for the time being, essentially a heavy rock band in debt to the blues. I'd have liked them to put the files on the stick as individual releases, so instead of the Grave Hill Bunker Rehearsals being bonus tracks on Morbid Tales, it would be a separate folder, just like the CD is separate in the CD version of this box set.The pace is generally quite frenetic, but here are heavier and slower numbers like “Dethroned Emperor” which demonstrate the band’s willingness to keep their wings well spread. But as we saw with Black Sabbath, new doors can be kicked open with very little in the way of planning, with revolutionary results; perhaps what is more interesting is looking at which artists stride purposefully through these doors that have arguably only been booted open accidentally.

The metal badge and woven patch are of decent quality, and the 40-page booklet is well worth a read.

There’s no denying the Black Sabbath influence (but, hell, what band wasn’t influenced by the Black Country’s favourite sons? That gag reflex was even stronger in the 1980s, when the spandex was tighter, the upside down crosses more pendulous and the nail enlivened armbands more of a pressing health and safety issue. I know that's what it means in English, but why not just leave the tracklisting as it was on the original?

Only CELTIC FROST could create an album which kicks off with a singular cover of a new wave song ( WALL OF VOODOO's "Mexican Radio") and immediately follow it up with the mournful tragedy of "Mesmerized".

Daring, dark and superlatively heavy, "To Mega Therion" is a sophisticated expression of CELTIC FROST's inherent drive to eschew genre limitations and, instead, define art on their own terms. Their label were disappointed by both the quality of Apocalyptic Raids and the stinking reviews it received and warned the band that they had one chance to redeem themselves. Featuring the first recording of the essential “Circle Of The Tyrants”, the EP is a solid snapshot of the sheer fanaticism that was the lifeblood of Tom and Martin in particular. Danse Macabre’ is an early career-spanning box set from Celtic Frost, one of Switzerland's most innovative and experimental metal bands. Danse Macabre" captures the radical ambition and evolution of CELTIC FROST from 1984 through to 1987.