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Celtic Frost |
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 Cold
Lake may be the most infamous Flash Metal
Suicide of ‘em all. Cold Lake pretty much killed
Celtic Frost’s career for good, and believe me, if they hadn’t made
this record, they’d be as revered as Slayer is now. They’d probably
have swimming pools, and Satanic groupies, and amped-up young ‘uns would
carve the “CF” logo into their arms and bleed half to death while
blastin’ their tunes. Tom Warrior would make cameos in big
Hollywood action movies as like, the mad Swiss bomber, and Martin Ain
would have his own (spooky) reality show. And a new Jeep. But none of that
is ever gonna happen now, baby. Why? Cold Lake. If ever there was
an album that aimed SO LOW it cut it's own creators off at the
ankles, it was Cold Lake. Tom G Warrior on Cold Lake, From Voices from the Darkside magazine, 2003: (interview by Frank Stover) I guess I can answer the following question myself already, but I will ask it anyway - why was "Cold Lake" not re-issued these days as well? "Because it's a piece of shit!" So, you also consider the music as a piece of shit?! "It is the biggest piece of garbage that ever happened to mankind and I don't see any needs to annoy mankind with it twice!" Could you imagine that the negative responses from your fans on that album would have been a little different if you would just have continued to use your old outfit? "Maybe, but it makes no difference anyway. I just consider the music, with or without photo, as total shit! I don't care about the photos, but to me as a musician, the music never ever can compete with everything else we have done as CELTIC FROST! It doesn't matter if we wear black clothes or if we are naked - the album sucks!" ___________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| Let us briefly backtrack. In 1982, Tom G. Warrior (who may or may not be Tom Fischer now; it changes a lot) was not a Warrior, or even a Tom. Instead, the teenage dirtbag was known as “Satanic Slaughter”, and his band, Hellhammer, shocked the world with a demo tape (“Triumph of Death”), that was so primitive, so ugly, so inept, that it just HAD to be genius. And so it was. Hellhammer just wanted to sound like Venom, really, but they had yet to master their instruments enuff to play at the triple-speed thrash n’ roll velocity of the super-Satanic trio, so they just aped Venom’s rudimentary riffs at one quarter the speed, and made up for the lack of forward motion by groaning like Frankenstein, wearing more bullet belts than anybody else, smearing ashy make-up on their faces (later on, somebody started callin’ it “Corpse-paint”, and then the party REALLY started), and convincing everyone that this crazy punk rock nightmare was all being done ON PURPOSE. |
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If they had been from LA, or New York, or
even London, they’d have been laughed right outta the fanzines, but they were
from Switzerland, and who the fuck knew what the Swiss were about? No one
had ever been to Switzerland, man. They could be up to ANYTHING up there.
They could have werewolves, even.  And even without werewolves, it was still a pretty boss idea. They looked
like rail-thin cadavers in the promo photos, and the other dudes in the
band were named “Savage Damage” and “Bloodhunter”, and even tho they
sounded absolutely godawful, they were so OUT THERE that it made ya feel
like you were part of some weirdo cult just to own their dumb tapes. And
then some cats in Germany (imagine that), went along with the joke far
enough to actually SIGN them to their label, Noise, just like a real rock
n’ roll band, and in 1984, the “Apocalyptic Raids” EP was released.
Original copies go for about $9,000 dollars now (or something like that).
Hellhammer also made it to a couple of compilations at the time – Metal
Massacre 5 (Metal Blade) and the infamous “Death Metal” sampler (Noise).
Why infamous? Well, the cover, a cannibal tableau (a death metal mainstay
years later) was banned, and Noise were forced to repress with a generic,
non-people eatin’ graphic, and it was called “Death Metal”, which was one
of the very first public appearances of said term. None of the bands on it
(Hellhammer, Running Wild, Helloween, Dark Avenger) actually played death
metal, but that’s only because it didn’t exist yet. But I digress. Hellhammer
STILL didn’t know how to play their instruments, but they were
easily the most infamous heavy metal band on the entire fuckin’ planet by
the time “Apocalyptic Raids” was released. |
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And they promptly broke up. In fact, by the time the first Hellhammer rip-off bands were brewing state-side, Mr. Slaughter and his un-merry men had all changed their names to boring things like Tom and Marty and were now known as the rather uppity sounding “Celtic Frost”. That’s with a “K” sound, by the way. That fell apart completely in the US, where everybody called ‘em “Seltic”, like the basketball team, but they really did prefer Keltic. That’s their problem, tho. They came up with the name (or so the story goes) by randomly mixing up parts of Cirith Ungol song titles, and envisioned themselves as the world’s first “avant garde” metal band, which was really kinda getting ahead of themselves, since they STILL couldn’t play any |
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better than a teenage speedfreak hardcore band by the time their
first record, the “Morbid Tales” EP (Noise, 1984) was released. |
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| Of course, in the US, none of the hairball kids had any inclination who Celtic First were. Back in the days of Hellhammer, they were rockin’ til they dropped to the sounds of Def Lep and Ratt and Crue, and they could not have cared any less about Switzerland and any of the Morbid Tales it had to offer. So, when “Cold Lake” was released stateside, these same kids just thought they had a new spandex band on their hands – a little heavier and uglier than usual, but what the hell. When Tom went “Ugh…Ooh!” on cock rockin’ opener “Seduce Me Tonight”, very, very few US rockers noticed it’s resemblance to Satanic Slaughter’s infamous “Death Grunts”, ya know? So fuck it, man, let’s just “party”, ok? |
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A flashy video was produced for “Cherry
Orchards”, a dizzy psyche-thrasher with “additional vocals” (bored
sounding spoken-word, basically) from one Michelle Villaneuva, and it
managed to briefly lock into regular rotation on then metal-saturated MTV. Villaneuva is reportedly an integral part of
CF’s Flash Metal Suicide, as ol’ death metal
Tommy had “Michelle” painted on his gee-tar by that point
– MV was his girl, see (she’s his wife now)- and insider reports have
‘Chelle pegged as a Nancy Spungen/Yoko Ono-styled pernicious influence on
Tom, and that she was most likely the one that convinced him that glam was
the next logical progression for CF. Interestingly, if Frost were an
American band, she would have been dead-on, as Stateside, the formerly
invisible Celtic Frost were now part of the Hairspray Nation, successfully
touring the country and selling more records than they ever had before.
But they weren’t an American band, man. They were fuckin’ Hellhammer! At first sight of “Cold Lake”, European fans openly wept, and many beat themselves about the head and neck. The suicide rate in Scandinavia went through the roof. Sales on pancake make-up and black lipstick dwindled down to nothing. It was awful. Eurobangers saw their grand and noble Warrior Tom reduced to a mess of acid-wash denim and ratted-out puffs of mallchick hair. His bass player, Curtis Victor Bryant, posed on the back cover shirtless, with red suspenders, his acid wash jeans unzipped, revealing a hairy man-bush. They looked like fuckin’ amateurs. Where once the mighty Frost penned songs of brutality and ethereal beauty like “Necromantical Screams” and “Caress into Oblivion”, now they had ham-fisted party-glam travesties with titles like “Little Velvet” and “Dance Sleazy”. The vast legions of fans that made Celtic Frost one of the biggest metal bands in the world abandoned them en masse, leaving them with only the Yanks for support. And not only do Americans forget about you LIKE THAT, the burgeoning grunge/alternative nation revolution was a mere year away. No doubt about it, man, Tom Warrior was one FUCKED rock n roller. |
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But, you know, as far as glam metal records go, aside from a disastrous ‘rap’ intro, “Cold Lake” is really not that bad. In fact, it’s not even glam metal, really, more of a cock rock/thrash metal hybrid. Like Carnivore with Steve Stevens on guitar, or something. Well, not that good, but you know what I mean. Tracks like “Once They Were Eagles” and “Juices Like Wine”, while far, far away from the “Avant Garde”, chamber of horrors versh of the Frost, are at least as good as the stuff Armored Saint and Laaz Rockit and Overkill were releasing at the time, and even with their horrid dress sense, they still weren’t as ugly as Anthrax, so mebbe those dorky Euro-kids were a little too harsh on CF. Me, I was mildly amused by the glam make-over, but there were so many hairspray bands on the scene by ’89, that I hardly noticed. Now, if they went the OTHER way, and terrorized the spandex kids with a blood drinking, corpse grinding, death dealing Hellhammer reunion, THAT I woulda paid attention to. But “Seduce Me Tonight”? Sorry, brother Tom, that’s just not gonna work out. To his credit, Warrior really did know this was all gonna explode in his razor-cheekboned face. Fearing the inevitable backlash, he begged his label to release Cold Lake under some other name- any name at all ‘cept for Celtic Frost. They did not, and the Frost suffered a lethal blow to their reputation. |
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The band regrouped a year later for a new album, “Vanity/Nemesis”
that was a return to their heavier roots, with some additional industrial
flourishes (it was produced by Swans-man Roli Mossiman). Original
Hellhammer/Frost bass player Martin Ain even came back to lay down some
thunderous bottom end. The record, released in 1990, was a critical and
artistic success, but the Cold Lake wounds had yet to heal for Euro-fans,
and Americans were wearing flannel in the Spring of ’90, so sales of the
record stiffed. A rarities comp with reworked older tracks, the awesomely
titled “Parched with Thirst I am and Dying”, was released n 1992, and did
well; however, Warrior had already moved on to other projects, and the
Celtic Frost rock n’ roll machine had ground to a halt. Warrior returned
to heavydom in ’96 with the space metal band Apollyon Sun. In
2000, his
autobiography, “Are Your Morbid?” was released by Sanctuary, and most
recently, he has been planning a full-on Celtic Frost reunion with the
original, “Morbid Tales” era line-up. Something tells me, tho, that they won’t be including “Dance Sleazy” in their set lists. ____________________________________________________________________________________ |
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-SLeazegrinder
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