The forgotten Celtic Frost album – 91%
Napero, October 24th, 2009
Celtic Frost has gone through a myriad transformations, and up to Into the Pandemonium, everybody seems to know their works, and have a solid opinion on every album. Cold Lake, deserved or not, seems to be the retarded little brother chained in the attic among the full-lengths, and even if it still does a lot better than the average Poison or Cinderella wannabe album, it is the universally loathed unsuccessful sell-out album. Monotheist is the ruthless and musically rather successful comeback album, and for a lot of Celtic Frost fans, the only album they have personally seen and experienced upon release. The rest is too old for an eager young metalhead to remember, and as the unnoticeable follow-up to Cold Lake, Vanity/Nemesis is easy to skip and forget.
Indeed, Vanity/Nemesis is the forgotten Celtic Frost album, and it definitely needs more attention in the grand scheme of things.The music on the album is not easy to define. There are few doom or black metal elements, but simply calling it thrash or heavy metal does not work on any level, either. Perhaps slowish thrash, with the locomotive riffing underneath the rest of the music, is the closest descriptive term available, but it conveys the wrong idea on its own. There may be some gothic ingredients in the stew, but again, simply tagging the album “gothic metal” is completely wrong. Some parts have a barely perceptible touch of 80s progressive metal in them, but generally the music is almost impossible to categorize in simple terms. And that, people, is the magic of Celtic Frost.
The album is a good one. That much is obvious. The metal is driving like a train, and the guitar tone is a pleasant compromise between the old Celtic Frost dental drill and the definite 80s metal crunch. There are occasional female vocals by someone called Uta Günther, and while they may well sound extremely grating, juvenile and irritatingly punkish on the first dozen or so spins of the album, they are something worth tolerating until you get used to them; once they become a part of the music in your mind, the album wouldn’t work without them. People say that beer is an aquired taste, but there are those of us who would not want to be without it, either, and while an operatic voice would have been an easier and more obvious choice, the relatively boorish and unsophisticated voice might well have been a conscious detail of dissention, chosen on purpose.
There are whispers, a few scattered solid thrash parts, and Tom’s trademark vocals, and if the listener sets his ears on the regrettable “analytic” mode upon the first track, it’s simply and purely human to look for glammy parts, some contemptible carry-on luggage from the allegedly loathsome Cold Lake times. There is little of that, but it is easy to think that the sound, the easier and more comfortable listening experience than on most Celtic Frost albums, is somehow legacy from the glam abomination. Vanity/Nemesis, unlike most other Celtic Frost albums, works as background music for certain activities, and while the rest of the band’s discography demands attention and breaks concentration centered on other tasks, this album has a unique character: it is simply inoffensive to a higher degree than any other Celtic Frost pieces of art. Glam this isn’t, and definitely not as dissonant in nature as the average Celtic Frost album, either… that is, if there ever was an “average” Celtic Frost album to begin with.
In the end, the music may technically be whatever it is, but the final verdict must be based on the experience and feelings the album leaves in the mind after the final track ends. And here the almighty Celtic Frost surpasses the expectations set by the technical dissection and analytical theory of this odd album. There are undercurrents, emotions and a strange brand of grimness in the music, and the experience is certainly more than the sum of its parts… once again. This is what Celtic Frost does best, and has always done. This time, however, the tools and methods used are not simple aggression and abrasion, or reckless avant-garde reconnaissance of uncharted territories, but rather refined and even amicable metal of somewhat indeterminate brand. The precious musical steak is hidden under the combination of perfectly executed riffing, doubly crass vocals, and ingenious songwriting. There is more to this than what can be read in the guitar tabs of the songs. Vanity/Nemesis is the forgotten Celtic Frost album, and while it may be mediocre on the scale set by the band’s other masterpieces, it certainly has the merits for more attention than what it gets.
This is a fine album that would have plenty of renown, had it been written by some other band. Among the works of Celtic Frost, this is just the album between Cold Lake and splitting up. Unfortunately.
rafazardly 