Danse Macabre

Product Information

A very limited edition Glow In The Dark vinyl variant edition of the LP box set will be available via EMP and Nuclear Blast online. This is limited to 1000 units. Yes, I recommend it (just!) but be ready for the disappointment when you see Morbid Tales and Emperor's Return. We hated these unwritten limitations in the metal scene,” he continues. “‘You cannot do this on an album, otherwise it's not metal…’ We thought, ‘Who writes these laws?’ Once we embarked on that path, Martin and I basically egged each other and continuously made each other more extreme in our endless discussions about these things. We just decided to abandon any restraint and not recognise any limits.” Convinced, Noise asked CELTIC FROST to record a mini-LP, even though that hadn't formed part of Warrior and Ain's concept document. Undeterred, and propelled by a burning urgency, CELTIC FROST set out to write and record a full-length LP in a matter of a few months. "Morbid Tales" was recorded with Horst Müller in Berlin and was unlike anything else. Intensely heavy, nuanced and experimental, the record was a radical musical statement of intent; a stunning synthesis of Warrior and Ain's disparate influences. From the furious opening riff of "Into The Crypts Of Rays" through to the avant-garde experimentation of "Danse Macabre", "Morbid Tales" heralded the arrival of CELTIC FROST as a profoundly unique and uncompromising band.

Into The Pandemonium" was the last recording made by this era of CELTIC FROST, bringing to an end a period of incredible creative and artistic growth over what was a remarkably brief period of time. That the teenagers who recorded "The Third Of The Storm" and "Triumph Of Death" for the HELLHAMMER EP would, despite constant turmoil, be recording the jaw-dropping "Rex Irae" just three years later is astonishing.Where the influence of bands like Joy Division and Siouxsie And The Banshees added to the band’s musical palette, visually To Mega Therion found Celtic Frost working with another Swiss outsider: genius artist H.R. Giger. Though by now the owner of an Oscar for his work on Alien, for much of his career Giger had been subject to similar criticisms as Hellhammer and Frost. His paintings were too dark, the art world had said, too weird, too unconventional. His ideas were dangerous, offensive, blasphemous. New Yorker Reed St Mark joined Celtic Frost as a permanent member in February 1985, replacing session drummer Stephen Priestly, and the trio recorded the ‘Emperor’s Return’ EP in April ‘85, at Noise’s request. Featuring the first recording of the essential ‘Circle Of The Tyrants’, the EP is a solid snap shot of the sheer fanaticism that was the lifeblood of Tom and Martin in particular. So this into went to the street, and there was a huge period of youth unrest in Zurich,” he remembers. “The establishment first reacted by sending the police with rubber bullets and tear gas. There were severe injuries. It was basically the establishment waging a civil war against the young people. And that’s the environment during which Hellhammer was formed.” To Mega Therion" was CELTIC FROST's next album, recorded in September '85. Due to personal difficulties, Martin was not in the band at that point, and so bass duties for the recording were carried out by session player Dominic Steiner. Martin's absence also meant that Tom was responsible for the music and virtually all of the lyrics. But despite difficult circumstances, the resulting album, however, was a triumph. Replete with iconic cover art by HR Giger, "To Mega Therion" imposes its dark majesty from the off with the orchestral bombast of "Innocence And Wrath", before launching into the savagery of the hook-laden "The Usurper". 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.

The early work of Swiss band Celtic Frost is among the most influential heavy metal of the 1980s. Now those recordings will be immortalized in the Danse Macabre box set, out November 25th in North America. I’m not overstating it when I say they hated it,” says Tom. “They hated every aspect of this album. And they let us know almost every day. I was mainly engaged in producing the album, as I wrote almost all of the music, and Martin was handling the phone calls, which wasn’t an easy job either. He was getting extreme negativity from Noise Records, threats that they’d cut the production, that they would withdraw the budget for the album, that they would send us home.”The ambition exceeded the capabilities – by setting a goal that was almost unachievable, it forced us to go and achieve it,” he says now. “To work like maniacs to reach this. We had nothing else. We had nothing to lose. All bridges are burned, so all you have to do is go forward.” The remarkable music Celtic Frost made between 1984 and 1987 is now gathered together in a massive box set – heavy both literally and musically – called Danse Macabre. Even now, it sounds more current than almost all other metal from that era. It displays the first crystallisation of extreme metal, where the sense of formal experimentation is every bit as important as grinding riffs. It still sounds brutally, thrillingly alive. Even for a man as modest as he – at one point he refers to the band’s early efforts as “a ham-fisted copy of Venom”, frequently and incorrectly places himself as being less talented than any other musician you could name, and jokes that he’s disappointed we’re here to talk about his own music “as I was hoping we would be talking about the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal” – there’s a tangible point to this remark.