Hammerhead>>Hellhammer>>CELTIC FROST - SWITZERLAND
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Into The Pandemonium - 1987 - Noise Cold Lake - 1988 - Noise Vanity/Nemesis - 1990 - Noise Monotheist - 2006 - Century Media |  |
Members Vocals Hellhammer, Apollyon's Sun, Apollyon Sun, Solo>>Thomas Fischer [Warrior/Thomas Gabriel]>>Apollyon's Sun, Apollyon Sun, Solo, Triptykon, Niryth, Triumph Of DeathGuitar Tarot, Grave Hill, Hellhammer>>Thomas Fischer [Warrior/Thomas Gabriel]>>Triumph Of Death, Niryth - Ron Marks>>Subsonic, LedSmith - Coroner, Hellhammer>>Oliver Amberg>>Junk Food, The Boris Karloff Syndrome, Kissing Lucifer, Sulfur Kings, The Haunted Echoes - Ron Marks>>Step Child, LedSmith - Tarot, Grave Hill, Hellhammer>>Thomas Fischer[Warrior/Thomas Gabriel]>>Apollyon's Sun, Apollyon Sun, Triptykon, Triumph Of Death, Niryth - Curt Victor Bryant>>Doomsday, Solo - Apollyon's Sun, Apollyon Sun>>Erol Unala>>Oath of CranesBass Schizo, Grave Hill, Hellhammer>>Martin Ain [Martin Stricker]>>Soul Dawn, Tar Pond - Curt Victor Bryant - Schizo, Soul Dawn, Grave Hill, Hellhammer>>Martin Eric Ain [Martin Strciker]>>Tar Pond - Schizo, Grave Hill, Hellhammer, Soul Dawn>MARTIN ERIC AIN [MARTIN STRICKER]>>Tar PondDrum Mindfunk>>Reed St. Mark [Reid Cruickshank]>>Mindfunk, Crown, Triptykon - Schizo>>Stephen Priestly [Stephen Priestly]>>Apollyon Sun, Kharma, Kilmister - Crown>>Reed St. Mark [Reid Cruickshank]>>Mindfunk, Triptykon - Schizo>>Steve Priestly [Stephen Gasser]>>Apollyon Sun, Kharma, Kilmister - Red, Flattrack, Burning Chrome, Monsoon>>FRANCO SESA>>NunFuckRitual, Oath of Cranes |
History & Biography Evolving from Switzerland's answer to Venom, namely Hellhammer, Celtic Frost quickly became one of the underground's biggest acts with its highly stylized early death metal approach. Getting a fair push from the then-innovative Noise Records, Celtic Frost's combination blackened lyrics, evil riffs and Warrior's trademark death grunts lead to a sizeable underground following. The band's 1984 EP Morbid Tales remains an icon of the genre. Dominic Steiner of Baby Steel replaced Ain here for a little while. The band was on the move though and quickly hit the evolution stage with a cover of Wall Of Voodoo's Mexican Radio. In 1986 the band announced that Mille of Kreator would join the line-up, as Celtic Frost had been unable to find a second guitarist. This did not transpire.
From there it was the introduction of opera vocals and a lighter and much maligned album called Cold Lake. Tiffany and Michael Jackson shirts by now replaced the face paint and bullet belts. In a true Spinal Tap moment it is rumoured that the whole image check was a result of Warrior's girlfriend taking over the band's management. Michelle Fischer would also sing for the band. Not finding many fans into 'former death metal band-turned-commercial-complete-with-hair-spray', the gang quickly reverted to heaviness with Vanity/Nemesis but the damage was done. Vanity/Nemesis had featured Ron Marks once again. Fischer attempted to get a new deal via a new demo, but nothing happened and the man formed a funk band before settling with Apollyon Sun (which was called Apollyon's Sun initially) - a proposed late Celtic Frost album was called Under Apollyon's Sun. A farewell compilation called Parched With Thirst Am I And Dying (adapted title from a Roman prayer) emerged in 1992. The band was promised a deal with BMG (distributors for Noise in North America) following Vanity/Nemesis, but this deal never materialized. Celtic Frost had threatened to come back throughout the years and Noise has, naturally, kept the re-releases flowing. Apollyon Sun, in the meanwhile, had not met with much success. This band actually participated in the Celtic Frost cover CD In Memory Of Celtic Frost in 1996! With the turn of the century, Fischer released an autobiographical book called Are You Morbid? through Sanctuary Publishing, which had purchased Noise Records. S.O.D.’s 1999 album Bigger Than The Devil featured a song called Celtic Frosted Flakes which recounted the act’s career. While rumours of a reunion were at first denied by Fischer, the come-back was finally confirmed at the end of 2002. The band posted a new demo song online in the spring of 2003. The line-up was Tom G. Warrior, Martin Eric Ain and Reed St. Mark and Apollyon Sun's guitarist and producer Erol Unala. The latter would leave the band on the eve of the release of a comeback album in 2006 ostensibly due to personal and musical issues. After much negotiation and recording the band signed to Century Media in 2006 for a new album in the spring of that year, entitled Monotheist (the working title was Dark Matter Manifest). Drummer Reed St. Mark was not part of the line-up. He was reportedly not in shape either physically or psychologically. Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren produced the album. Shows were scheduled for both sides of the Atlantic. The band announced the addition of Norwegian guitar player Anders Odden as a touring member in May. The guitarist had previously been a member of Mayhem and Satyricon. The band had to cancel several shows soon though following a case of kidney stones in Tom G. Warrior in May, 2006. V. Santura of Dark Fortress from Germany joined the band as touring guitarist in 2007. Singer and founder Thomas Gabriel Fischer unexpectedly left in April of 2008. The band was again gone on hiatus and cancelled previously announced shows. The break-up was the result of personal tensions within the band with Fischer and Sesa having a falling out, according to the singer. Fischer indicated he would record music again. Following his departure from the band Tom Gabriel Fischer formed a new band, which was called Triptykon. The new group was composing and recording music that was close to Celtic Frost according to the main man. 1349’s Revelations Of The Black Flame was co-mixed by Tom Gabriel Fischer in 2009. Thomas Gabriel Fischer and Bazillion Points Books announced a release date of November of 2009 as the publication date for Only Death Is Real: An Illustrated History Of Hellhammer And Early Celtic Frost. It was compiled by Fischer in cooperation with band bassist Martin Eric Ain. In a blog comment, Fischer also claimed to have relinquished all financial interest in the bands’ catalogue henceforth in order to escape his former colleagues. Former bassist Martin Eric Ain died on Saturday, October 21st 2017 due to a heart attack. Triumph Of Death, featuring Tom Warrior of Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, were booked to play Hellhammer’s music live in 2019. The band was to perform at Hellfest festival on June 21st in France. Tom Gabriel Fischer stated his openness to resurrecting Celtic Frost, under another name, to pay tribute to the dead bassist Martin Eric Ain. Tom Warrior/Tom Gabriel Fischer was among the recipients of the Swiss Music Prize 2021, which was awarded by the Swiss Federal Office Of Culture in Switzerland in September. A Celtic Frost compilation featuring the band’s first three years and important recordings was called Danse Macabre and out on 28.10.2022. The boxed set was out through Noise Records. A Tom Gabriel Warrior trilogy charting the career of the man responsible for Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and Triptykon was to occur over a three-day series of headline concerts at the Time To Rock festival in Knislinge, Sweden in June 2023. Time To Kill Records was releasing Mesmerized – A Tribute To Celtic Frost on January 26th 2024. Compiled by Alberto Penzin of Schizo, participants included Doomraiser, Kryptonomicon and Necrodeath among others. Reviews CELTIC FROST - MONOTHEIST - CENTURY MEDIA Interviews When Ali "The Metallian" and bassist Martin Eric Ain sat down 2:00
am Swiss time for a chat, it was not Metallian's first attempt at
speaking to Celtic Frost on the occasion of the release of
Monotheist, the band's comeback album. A scheduled chat with
frontman Tom Fischer had fallen through only one week earlier. Ain
was more than amiable and, in the course of the conversation, proved
himself quite passionate, well-read, talkative and consequently
informative. Here is the gist of how the conversation went. -
04.05.2006METALLIAN: In the course of the last several years different interviews and news reports had the band coming back, or reforming, alternatively as a side-project or as a full-time band. How is Celtic Frost to be viewed in 2006? MARTIN: This band is a full-fledged, one-hundred percent full-time project. It has been so in the last couple of years and especially since the end of 2004. We haven't had time to do anything else other than Celtic Frost and, for at least the next year, we wont have time for anything else either. Of course, Erol and Tom put the band Apollyon Sun aside when we restarted Celtic Frost. Now that Erol has left Celtic Frost I think Tom has said that there wont be another Apollyon Sun album because Erol and Tom were Apollyon Sun. They don't work together anymore, so Tom doesn't see why there should be another Apollyon Sun album. Then again, you never know because if you had asked me ten years ago whether I would be teaming up with Tom again and if we could get our differences worked out I would have said no. Time is a factor that has to be considered in that regard. Tom has a solo project he has been working on though. He has material written too, but I doubt he will have time for it in the near future. We already had musical ideas, which we didn't include on Monotheist because we decided we have done enough crazy work and we wanted this album finished. Another Celtic Frost album could be in the pipes pretty fast actually. The easy answer is that this is a full-time project. METALLIAN: Martin, seeing that you have been in and out of Celtic Frost several times over the years how committed do you see yourself to the band at this point in time? MARTIN: I think I have never been committed as much as I am right now. It is in a completely different way. I was committed to Celtic Frost when in 1984 Tom and I had founded it given the vision we had for it once we broke up Hellhammer. This time around though I am much more aware of what this band is, what makes it work, the relationships that make up this band and we are taking on more responsibilities like producing this album. We are executive producing it, financing it, getting everything organized and that can only be done if you are dedicated. It is not enough if you are eighty-percent committed. You have to be committed three or four hundred percent; otherwise this thing won't come to pass. We have worked four years on getting this band back on track. We have been eating and breathing Celtic Frost. We have been realizing what the Celtic Frost of the new millennium is all about. We have worked out personal issues. This is serious hard work and four years is a long time. It was four years between Apocalyptic Raids by Hellhammer and Cold Lake by Celtic Frost, you know? We deliberately took our time to get it right. We have something that we think is Celtic Frost. It is different from 1987 when I left the band after the Into the Pandemonium tours. I tried to come back after Vanity/Nemesis and just wasn't able. It took me several years to get myself together again. I was completely fallen apart, wasted, broken down and burnt out back then. You have to realize I was 16 when we had recorded Apocalyptic Raids. I was 20 when I left Celtic Frost. I had experienced my entire music career in four years. I was young. In hindsight I was too young and couldn't deal with it. It has taken me this long to get it together again. METALLIAN: Did it also take some time to write and re-write music for the current album? Was it an onerous task? MARTIN: No, it wasn't the songs. This was not about writing songs or recording a new Celtic Frost album. This was about becoming Celtic Frost again. It was about becoming a unit. We were not a unit for over a decade. Tom and I had nothing to do with each other. We also wanted to do this in the 'now.' We didn't want to fall into the classic trap, that many old bands fall into, by rehashing the glory of the old days. We said, "fuck this. We don't want to do that." We wanted to do things on our own and do them in the 'now.' That is much more difficult than copying ourselves. That would have been easier. METALLIAN: In your opinion, would there be a Celtic Frost today were Apollyon Sun successful? MARTIN: I don't think Tom would be forgetting about reforming Celtic Frost, but I also think he would be doing Apollyon Sun now. He would be busy with that band. As I mentioned, he has already written songs for his solo project on a computer on a synthesizer. Actually, we took a couple of parts from his songs and translated them into guitar for this album. We talked about Celtic Frost's return for the first time in 1999 when the former record company approached us to re-issue the old albums. We started talking about the past, the back catalogue, the legacy and how it should be represented. That was the first time Tom and I got together and sat down. We realized we were influential and pondered the question 'why?' What was it that made the band special? Were we at the right place at the right time or did we have a special chemistry? Would we be able to create something like this again? Back then he was busy with Apollyon Sun and we knew Celtic Frost would not happen until Apollyon Sun had either run its course or leave enough space for this band. In 2001, Apollyon Sun ran into problems with its record company. The fact is we had talked and said this reformation would be interesting and we would like to do it. Tom approached me and he seemed genuine METALLIAN: You recently lost the services of guitarist Erol Unala. Why would he leave just before the album's release when he had participated in the recordings? MARTIN: First, nobody has taken his place. We have a guitarist for touring and that might change. We will look for a permanent guitarist as a full-time member down the road. We have 60 shows just in North America and that person has to be able to relate to us. Tom and Erol had come together at the very end of Celtic Frost. It was Erol's brother who had played on the last Celtic Frost demos. They were close friends. Tom obviously brought Erol into Apollyon Sun and also brought him along when we decided to do the band again. Four years is a long time. When he joined Erol had just got married. Four years later he has two kids and a new outlook on life. Once we said we want to do this full-time he was not able to give it his all. He was saying he wants to give it his all, but I have a family I am responsible for, the kids are small and so on. That became a schism in the band. Also, once Franco joined and we had a proper drummer - we were writing for two years without a drummer - a musical radicalization process started to take place. Franco came from a bunch of local bands I had booked myself when I was a promoter and a club manager. We had approached former drummer Reed St. Mark, but he didn't work out for reasons I don't want to get into. Some of those reasons are very personal for Reed. Anyway, we realized that Erol had a hard time with the radicalization process. The music became too dark and destructive for him to deal with. He became the outsider in that regard. Everyday he was the outsider a little more and over four years it was a different story. METALLIAN: Did any of the music on the current album also originally belong to Apollyon Sun or has even older origins? MARTIN: Yes, to everything you just asked. There is stuff there that was written for the Nemesis Of Power demo in 1992. It was on a song called Pearl Of Love back then and is now on the song Domain Of Decay. Certain passages that Erol had written in Apollyon Sun shaped the basis for Obscured. We now have material for three albums. We had 25 songs by the end of 2002. Out of those only Obscured is on Monotheist. The other 14 were not deemed worthy of Celtic Frost. There is excellent material, but they didn't sound like Celtic Frost. We also took every kind of creative approach you can imagine. Songs were worked on and went back to months later. We worked as a classic metal band, guitar, bass and drum. We also played with session drummers and drum machines. METALLIAN: Martin, from your perspective, did the return of Celtic Frost have any relation to the need for money and income or was it a purely artistic endeavour? MARTIN: It had a lot to do with money. Everything in this business has to do with money. It had to do with the fact that we were putting up all the money on our own with some support from close friends in Switzerland. We invested sixty to seventy thousand dollars just to record the album and get the artwork. Then there was furnishing the rehearsal room, getting equipment in working order, paying the rent and more. We had negotiated with several labels and had offers from several, but they just wanted a rehash of the past. We also had ludicrous offers from the big festivals to play there. Those were ludicrous offers in exchange for exclusive shows there and much more than we are getting now for shows. We didn't want to go out and relive the glory or any of that bullshit. We also didn't want to sell our soul away either. We had already done that! We wanted to reclaim our soul. It took a while to come together as a person after I had wasted myself, wasted my youth on the business fuckers that are non-fucking worthy assholes. These people won every fucking right to every thing I had created in my youth for 75 years after I would have died. So I fucking said, 'no fucking way' and Tom would have put it even less nicely than I did. So I said no to those people. We said we will finance everything on our own and we will take the necessary time. We didn't want to be pressured by some nitwit motherfucking asshole sitting in an office thinking he knows how creativity happens. They usually think it happens in regard to some chart and how some release schedule is worked out. It doesn't happen like that. We don't want to be pressured by a record company that says when they want the record released. It will be released once it is finished. It took four years in this case. It cost more money than we would have thought in the first place. Whether we will get that money back is not obvious. Will the record be successful, will the touring be successful, will we sell merchandise? Then we will make money and make a living off it. As we speak, we are preparing for the tour and each of us is till working. We will play our first show in four weeks and I am trying to make money to pay the rent. So this is not about the money. If it does work out it will become about the money. It will work out if we realize it's a business and, of course, we have realized it is a business, but we have come to it with our own terms. If the risk works out it will be worthwhile this time. Maybe some money will find its way into our pockets this time. This is not up to us to decide, of course. It is up to the audience. This album is licensed to Century Media. This is also why it took half a year to negotiate with several labels. We finally thought it would work out best with Century Media. They not only showed enthusiasm for our music, but also were willing to come to terms with most of our demands. Several other record companies had all the enthusiasm, but we realized they couldn't give us what we desired or they weren't able to give it to us because they were too small. We thought that coming back after 15 years we wanted to have a record company that would promote this album. So you see, it is about the money because in the end it is always about the money. In this world, if you don't have the money you might as well just be dead. METALLIAN: Seeing that the band's last album was tied to Noise Records, now Sanctuary, were you somehow connected to them contractually? MARTIN: No, not all. There was no contract, so there was no pressure. METALLIAN: Martin, talking a little about the music now one has to say that the material on Monotheist is quite dark. MARTIN: I think you get it. That is what we realized was the result in the end. I am amazed how people react to it or how people reflect it back to us because right now I would say it is not dark enough and that it could have been darker. I think it is surprising how it comes across to a lot of people. Some people have stated that they have been touched by the emotions on the album and that is also something we were striving for. Monotheist is the most emotional and spiritual album we ever recorded. METALLIAN: What about the title, Martin? What are the denotations of Monotheist and the cross on the cover? MARTIN: You know, the dark atmosphere stems from ourselves and what we went through in the past. This is also reflected in the title, which is a metaphor. The album deals with issues of faith and belief, or the lack thereof. We were looking for a title that reflected that on a personal level and also as far away from us as possible. It is a great title because it deals with the belief in only one god, but deals with it from a personal point of view. It deals with the person who deals with one god, but doesn't say which god. Of course, we grew up in the Christian society which is why we have a cross there. We use it both upright and in the inverted positions. Some are one way, but some other covers are the other. Both are Christian symbols. People forget that. The inverted cross is not a Satanic symbol to begin with. The inverted cross is the cross of St. Peter and is the pope's own cross. St. Peter was crucified upside down, says the myth. People who use the inverted cross acknowledge Christianity because they use the symbol of a Christian god. Otherwise, the symbol would be meaningless, powerless and why use it? If you say you are a Satanist you are saying you believe in the Christian belief system, although as an antithesis. There can be no antithesis without a thesis. Satan is a biblical figure from the old testament. He was working for God, as an accuser. He was sent out by God to deal with people. The Christians turned him into the antithesis for God. In the old testament, the god of the Hebrews was angry and a nasty god. All of a sudden, in the new testament God was an all-loving and passionate figure. We tried to reflect this. Of course, now you have the rise of the fundamentalist monotheist religions again. Fundamentalism in Islam and fundamentalism in Christianity are rising. Fundamentalism is on the rise in America. Creationist are trying to get their view that the world is 3,000 years old should be taught at schools to children who don't know better. I think this is an issue that is quite important right now. In a way, the title also reflects the zeitgeist. METALLIAN: Martin, you seem deeply interested and involved. Do you consider yourself well travelled or particularly well read? MARTIN: I read a lot. I think a lot. I give things a thought. I see things and I want to make sense of it. I confront myself with what is going on around me. I have done that, in a particular way, since I was a kid. I was brought up to be a Christian. My mother was a Catholic religious teacher and I had to go to church a lot. One of my first memories of church is I as a six-year old kid sitting in church and I have a life-size cross in front of me depicting the agony of Christ. That is the figure of a male human being tortured in agony hanging in front of me and the people are jubilating and celebrating. They do it solemnly, but it is uplifting in the end. I had seen the cross around my mother's neck and with people and I realized that there is a connection between the two. I thought it was gruesome. I was shocked., I was traumatized. The adults around me didn't get it. They didn't question it. I felt estranged completely and totally. It was shocking and fascinating because I was told this is my God and that he died for my sins. I was six years old and as thinking 'what sins?' and 'am I a sinner?' I thought I was really bad. Strangely enough, I realized nobody else around me was giving it those thoughts. No one was questioning those things. I was questioning things that people took for granted because that was the way things were, you know? People wearing gold crosses around their necks later bullied me at school. First of all, the cross was an instrument of torture and then they were acting like they would nail me to the cross. I realized quite early on that Christianity was a part of society and most Christians are hypocrites. 
METALLIAN: At the same time what has your mother always thought of
your musical activities? MARTIN: I think she has come to terms with it especially since she realized I wouldn't become a drug fiended Satanic child slaughterer who is wasting his life away and give the family a bad name. Especially after I left Celtic Frost and started to become a businessman and successful she acknowledged that I didn't turn out too badly. Not too long ago my father came up to me and basically excused himself. He said he was sorry that they didn't support me and admitted he didn't realize that it would turn out like that. It meant a great deal to me that he would acknowledge me like that. For a long time I couldn't deal with my parents. I had left my family back in the early days Of Celtic Frost because they were completely opposed to what I was doing. My mother's health has been failing recently though so it is hard to tell with her. I became the parable of the lost son, I guess. METALLIAN: Is Ain an alias for you? MARTIN: Oh yeah. It is something I made up. What is the first thing you do when you become somebody else and don't relate to your family anymore? The family name is the first thing to go. Letting go of my surname was an act of will, an act of power, an act of magic. It created my personality and myself. Of course, we had names like Satanic Slaughter in Hellhammer, but I realize that I needed a name that I could relate to once I turned eighty. It had to be me and myself. I came up with Ain, which is Hebrew and found in the Cabbala. It is a way of getting to the Jewish torah through mysticism in numbers. Every Hebrew letter has a number standing for it so every word has several numbers whose addition gives a new number which gives it a new meaning. The equivalent to Ain would be zero, which is like alpha and omega in Greek. It means it is an empty word. It is the beginning and the end and could stand for death or nothing. I could relate to that. I was beginning a new life with Hellhammer and Celtic Frost and I was leaving my family. I was also dealing with the personality that thought this life here was futile. At the end there would be death and the struggle, whatever I would do, is absurd. That is all I had though. It was all I got. My real name is known around here in Switzerland, but I don't disclose it all the time. METALLIAN: Martin, what can the fans expect next from Celtic Frost aside from the new album? MARTIN: There is a video for the song ground planned. We are still looking at contracts and ideas from directors. After the touring we will take some of the material we have collected over the years, plus a lot of filming, which we will do on tour, and make a DVD. That will cover all eras of the band. Also, as I said, we had ideas for several albums and many songs so we will use those on the next Celtic Frost album. If we survive the extensive tour schedule and the unit that we have formed in the last four years you will see an album and a video next year. We have given Century Media this album plus an option through our own company. METALLIAN: Martin, thank you for this chat and the time you have given Metallian. MARTIN: Ali, you are welcome. We had a good chat, this was a good interview with good questions. So I hope we can do more when we get some extra time. Bassist Ain, singer/guitarist Thomas Warrior Fischer and drummer Franco Sesa will be on tour for the next year on both sides of the Atlantic. For more information hit their site at, what else, www.celticfrost.com.
If you enjoyed this, read King Diamond
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Celtic Frost