CELTIC FROST + 1349 + Sahg @ Le Medley

By K-Man - 09/16/2006

OK first off, I have to admit that I thought this show would either be retardedly heavy or horribly bad. I am glad to report that it was like high doom at the OK Corral.

The show started a little earlier than expected; having cocktails after closing shop at a friend's music store, we warmed up with the new Slayer album and some Entombed -- two more bands that obviously listened to Celtic Frost. By the time we left Soundcentral and walked the three blocks to The Medley, we'd already missed Sahg and half of 1349's set.

Sources (Zelig -- dude has seen as many shows as I have) say that Sahg was tight and stoner-like and he bought their CD. I'll make it a point to see them.

Walking in on 1349 just tearing the shit out of the venue was like walking in on the apocalypse itself. In a nutshell: I walk in and the first thing I see is one of Montreal's finest in front of the concession stand: pig in blue, hands clapped over his filthy piglet ears, face contorted with fear and wonder (but mostly fear). We secured a vantage point to see better, I turn around and in that short minute, the big bad wolf had blown the little pig right out the front door. The brutality was real, as was their conviction (makeup aside, these guys were seriously packin' matches for some midnight church burnings, no joke). They were dripping with it folks.

I don't throw the word "icon" around -- it can seem a little dramatic. Celtic Frost however are just that: icons of their genre. They are the pioneers of Doom, Death, Black and Speed Metal. I remember going to Rock En Stock as a teenager, like '83/'84/'85, and picking up Possessed, Corrosion of Conformity, Venom -- you get the picture -- and one of the albums that stood out most had this cool H.R. Giger painting on it. The album (of course) was To Mega Therion. My buddy picked it up on one of those visits and I think I bought the Die, Die My Darling EP that time. Let's just say that To Mega Therion changed a few things for us that weekend. When they came to Montreal to play the World War III metal show in '85, with Voivod and Possessed, so did this city's perception of what 'metal' could be.

Ahh...to dine with the Divine. Saturday the 16th 2006 was a good day to die. Tom G. (Warrior) Fischer (guit./vox), Eric Ain (bass) and Reed St.Mark (drums) were all there just like they were 17 years ago, with a more than adequate second guitar player. I used to listen to them for their fast thrashy parts but was quickly reminded of just how slow and doomy they really are.

These guys influenced everybody from Slayer to Obituary to the Melvins to bands like Sepultura, Fantomas, Earthride and 1349, and pretty much all of the Norwegian black metal bands. The list could literally go on forever.

Fischer and Ain were in another band called Hellhammer in '81 or thereabouts. Legend has it that Warrior got back to Switzerland from a British metal festival featuring Venom and the light went on for 'ol Fischer: the birth of Celtic Frost. The rest is history and we heard history. They tore through their first release,'84's Morbid Tales (including the show opener "Approcreation of the Wicked", "Emperor's Return", "Dance Macabre" and their insane closer that night, "Into the Crypts of Rays"), almost all of '85's To Mega Therion ("Jewel Throne", "Necromantical Screams", the devastating "Circle of Tyrants" -- everything but "Endless Summer") and "Mesmerized" from their later album Into the Pandemonium. They mercifully avoided their material from their hair-farming era (late 80's - early 90's), only to blow us away with numbing songs from their new album called Monotheist, which is pretty bloody heavy at that. Super heavy, best Doom Metal I've seen/heard in a long... long time.

Celtic Frost are packing in a brilliantly tight, super heavy package of doom, black, speed and real honest-to-Satan ol' school mosh parts, in a 60+ date tour this summer and fall -- remember when moshing was actually moshing: people got hurt, that was the deal, none of this kata-posing, Che Guevara-cap-wearin' mama's boys, pick-up-the-next-guy-that-falls, fairy bullshit 'moves' these dweebs are tip-toeing to at Dillinger Escape Plan shows... it ain't called The Safety Dance for a reason). If you missed them, I'm sorry for you, but you can check out Celtic Frost's performance at this year's Wachen Open Air Festival on a popular German television rock show and you'll get the general idea. Iconically slow, iconically fast, iconically doomy, 'Nihil Verum Nisi Mors', bitches.

[Tune in to Beyond That Graveyard III every Friday from 9pm to Midnight.]