CELTIC FROST – Co-Founder Martin Eric Ain Dead At 50

Originally launched in 1984, Celtic Frost was active until 1993, then reformed again in 2001 before disbanding again in 2008.

Celtic Frost was a heavy metal band from Zürich, Switzerland. They are known for their heavy influence on the extreme metal genres, particularly black metal. The group was first active from 1984 to 1993, and re-formed in 2001. Following Tom Gabriel Fischer’s departure in 2008, Celtic Frost decided to break up again.

Zürich, Switzerland’s Celtic Frost were the supreme stylists of the nascent thrash and death metal genres when the band emerged in the mid-1980s. Celtic Frost’s ultra-heavy, extreme version of metal, as well as the band’s image — one of the first to include corpsepaint — anticipated the direction the genre would take over the next twenty-five years. The cult surrounding the band, particularly its first two albums, has continued to grow exponentially since its formation, and includes a number of musicians. Kurt Cobain, for instance, told reporters he had listened obsessively to a tape of Celtic Frost before recording Nirvana’s debut album, Bleach.

Singer and guitarist Tom Gabriel Fischer had founded the primitive, proto-death metal band Hellhammer in 1982. Bassist Martin Eric Ain joined Hellhammer the following year. On Celtic Frost’s website, Fischer says of his association with the genre’s guttural vocal style: “There were a number of death grunts in rock and funk music in the 1970s (and I believe even earlier), but [original Iron Maiden singer] Paul Di’Anno circa 1980/81 is indeed the reason why we in Hellhammer began to do the death grunt. Why it became so famous with us, out of all the bands who used/use it, I don’t know. The press just loved Celtic Frost doing it and publicized it accordingly.”

Fischer and Ain formed Celtic Frost in June 1984, following Hellhammer’s breakup the month before, with a session drummer, happily named Stephen Priestly. Celtic Frost’s debut album, Morbid Tales (1984 Noise/Metal Blade), is a quantum leap in heaviness for the metal genre. The band, whose worldview seems closest to author H.P. Lovecraft’s “cosmic terror,” disavows Satanism as well as Christianity: “There’s no human scheme in the beyond,” Fischer sings on “Into the Crypts of Rays.” The track “Danse Macabre” seems to be a kind of audio play, dramatizing some unspeakable encounter with supernatural forces. New drummer Reed St. Mark, from New York City, joined the band on the hastily recorded Emperor’s Return EP (1985 Noise).

Ain briefly left the band during the recording of Celtic Frost’s second album, which he had already named. The title of To Mega Therion (1985 Noise) is Greek for “The Great Beast” and presumably refers to the seven-headed, ten-horned monster that rises out of the sea in Revelation 13, though John does not use the adjective “mega” in the Greek original. Occultist Aleister Crowley sometimes identified himself as “TO MEGA THERION.” The album’s cover art features two paintings by Swiss artist H.R. Giger, creator of the Alien (1979) alien. Dominic Steiner plays bass on the original To Mega Therion, though Ain appears on several tracks on the 1999 reissue of the album, which replaces the original recordings of “The Usurper” and “Jewel Throne” with the re-recorded versions of those songs, featuring Ain, that appeared on the Tragic Serenades EP (1986 Noise). Orchestral brass contributes to the Wagnerian pomp of songs such as “Innocence and Wrath” and “Dawn of Meggido.”

Source: Lambgoat

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