Switzerland sat between Germany and Italy and belonged to neither scene, and the band who came out of it changed shape on every record, got one of them catastrophically wrong, and influenced more of extreme metal than most of the people who were doing it properly.
Hellhammer
The starting point, and one of the most derided records of its period. Tom Warrior and Martin Ain made music that was slower, uglier and more primitive than anything else being released in 1984, and the contemporary reviews were brutal.
What they were doing was skipping thrash entirely. There is no downpicked riff sequence here and no attempt at speed for its own sake; there is weight, filth and a deliberate refusal of competence, and death metal and black metal were both built partly out of it.
Warrior wound the band up within months, largely because of the reception, and started again.
Celtic Frost
Morbid Tales in 1984 and To Mega Therion in 1985 are where it comes together. The second in particular is extraordinary: heavy, strange, with orchestral instruments, female vocals and a cover by H.R. Giger, made by a band who eighteen months earlier had been the most primitive thing in Europe.
Then Into the Pandemonium in 1987 went further still, with a cover of a new wave song, an industrial track and material that no metal band had attempted. It baffled everybody and is now regarded as one of the most important records of the decade.
The catastrophe
Cold Lake in 1988 is the most complete artistic failure in this history. A band who had made three of the strangest records in metal released a glam album, with the hair and the clothes to match, and it is unlistenable.
Warrior has been unusually candid about it. The record has never been properly reissued at his insistence, and he has described the period in terms that leave no room for rehabilitation.
| Record | Year | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Apocalyptic Raids | 1984 | Primitive, and foundational |
| Morbid Tales | 1984 | The reset |
| To Mega Therion | 1985 | Orchestration and a Giger cover |
| Into the Pandemonium | 1987 | Beyond category |
| Cold Lake | 1988 | The catastrophe |
| Monotheist | 2006 | The return nobody expected |
Why they matter to a thrash history
Because half the German and Scandinavian bands took something from them, and because they demonstrate the limits of the categories.
Celtic Frost are not a thrash band and they were signed to the same label, recorded in the same studios and toured with the same groups. The Norwegian black metal scene took the atmosphere and the imagery. Death metal took the weight. And a whole strand of what later became avant garde metal took the permission to do anything at all.
Monotheist
In 2006, eighteen years after the disaster, Warrior and Ain reformed and made a record that nobody predicted and that is genuinely excellent: slow, enormous, bleak and completely unlike anything else being released.
Ain died in 2017. Warrior has continued with Triptykon, which is effectively the same project under another name.
The scene next door that they were adjacent to rather than part of is Teutonic Thrash, and what the German records fed into is in the third German pillar.
The Swiss position
Switzerland had no metal industry, no venue circuit and a population smaller than several German cities, and it produced two of the most important bands in European extreme music within a few years of each other.
Celtic Frost and Coroner both came from Zurich, and the connection is direct: Coroner's members were Celtic Frost's road crew. That is a scene of about fifteen people producing two catalogues that are still being written about forty years later.
What Switzerland gave both bands was the same thing Quebec gave Voivod and Minas Gerais gave Sarcofago: nobody watching, no house style, and no reason to sound like anybody.
The Giger connection
H.R. Giger was Swiss, and the cover of To Mega Therion is a Giger painting, which is a remarkable thing for a band on a small German label to have obtained in 1985.
It also placed the record visually somewhere no metal album had been. Giger was known internationally for film work rather than for record sleeves, and putting that image on a thrash adjacent album from Zurich signalled ambition considerably more loudly than any press release could have.
Where to start
To Mega Therion, which is the most complete and the most immediately impressive. Then Morbid Tales, which is rawer. Then Into the Pandemonium, which requires patience and is the most rewarding of the three.
Then Monotheist from 2006, which is a different band and a genuinely great record. Approach Apocalyptic Raids last and only if the primitive end appeals; taken first it will simply sound incompetent, which is what everybody said in 1984.
What Warrior did next
Triptykon, formed in 2008 after Celtic Frost ended for the second time, and effectively a continuation of what Monotheist started. The records are slow, enormous and bleak, with Warrior's own artwork direction, and they are as good as anything he has made.
That is a considerably better late career than a man who released Cold Lake in 1988 had any right to expect, and it rests on the same quality that produced the early records: a complete willingness to make the thing he wants and accept whatever reception follows.
And one caution about the reissues. Several Celtic Frost titles have been remastered and expanded more than once, with different bonus material and in one case a substantially altered mix, and Warrior has publicly disowned some of those versions. Anybody buying these records should check which edition they are getting, because the difference is not trivial.
A final note on the name. Warrior has said that Celtic Frost was chosen partly to escape the Hellhammer reputation, which had become so toxic in the German press that a new name was a practical necessity rather than an artistic gesture. Very few bands have had to rebrand because a previous project was too badly reviewed, and fewer still have gone on to make the records this one did.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original pressings. Martin Eric Ain died on 21 October 2017.
