Danse Macabre

Product Information

Black and Death metal with occasional hints of doom and ambient and strong lyrics too, an intelligent and professional touch that put Celtic Frost above many at the time. So we talked about this among the members of Triptykon, and I wanted to be sure everybody does it for the right reasons, and nobody’s against this. The Sign of the Usurper came about because I collaborated with BMG once again in 2017 for the reissue of the original Celtic Frost albums, which was also a very pleasant and professional experience. There are more than a few moments here when it would be easier to look back and compare Celtic Frost to The Cure or Dead Can Dance than to Slayer or Exodus, while pointing the way forwards to the Young Gods and Jane’s Addiction.

BMG’s lovingly curated and luxurious new box set is rammed to its massive metal gills – seven gorgeous sounding remastered LPs/EPs on fancy schmancy vinyl, one 7”, one cassette [ Grave Hill Bunker Rehearsals], a 40 page hardback 12”x12” book with lots of cool photos and a short oral history of Celtic Frost Mark I, a “Necromaniac Union” enamel badge, a large two-sided poster, a snazzy Heptagram figurine USB stick with everything on MP3 plus extra tracks and a patch for your battle jacket – gives you pretty much everything the band produced during their mercurial 1984 to 1987 age of innovation.Extreme metal band Celtic Frost, lead by guitarist Thomas Gabriel Fisher (aka Thomas G Warrior), were formed in the early 80s from the ashes of Hellhammer. 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. The album's experimentation is still striking today, challenging how we perceive heavy music and what it means to take music risks. If the band’s manifesto was to embark upon an experimental charge into unoccupied space, then having to act quickly, probably upset that impulse somewhat while giving them a ragged edge and Morbid Tales is probably best seen as a rollicking great proto-death thrasher with some tastes of what’s yet to come. However, the impulse to gatekeep has remained consistently strong, and the idea of heavy metal becoming accepted as a groundbreaking artform of great cultural worth is still a problematic idea to most who consider these things.

Danse Macabre” captures the radical ambition and evolution of CELTIC FROST from 1984 through to 1987.

The rapidfire rate of creativity during this period perhaps reflects that Fischer understood that, in creative terms, once a vein of ore is located, it must be mined with speed and precision before a rockfall obscures it forever.