Celtic Frost "To Mega Therion" Cassette

For it be this album is a 10/10? A magnum opus for the Celtic Frost? Indeed this is. Celtic Frost, over a year after their breakup as Hellhammer and eventual release of Morbid Tales, their EP (LP if you're in the states) hit it off big, starting from their real debut. To Mega Therion can only be described as one of the most influential and hard-hitting albums of the 80's metal scene. Described as a blackened twist of thrash and doom metal with hits of early death metal, the album takes each style of genre and uses it to its abilities as much as possible. The progressive usage of an orchestra and high-octave vocals also spur this album with many great touches. With many standout moments, songs, and deliveries, To Mega Therion is seriously one of the most well-blended metal albums to date.
To start, To Mega Therion's sound is very ahead of its time. The production and the mixing of the album are fantastic, leaving room for each instrument for their separate parts of each song - layered in such a way that no either instrument get in one's way sound-wise. A great way in which the album is ahead of the times of 1985 is the fact that the atmosphere and sound of this album hit like a slow-paced sledgehammer. With intensely fast thrash riffs that will get you moving all about in tracks like "The Usurper" and "Circle of the Tyrants" to the slower sludge-like tempos of the riffs in songs like "Fainted Eyes" and "Necromantical Screams" with all of it wrapped tightly in a doom-latent groove. An important addition to this album brought on by the band is the use of a French horn, used in the tracks of the intro, "Innocence and Wrath" and the ballistic down-tuned track of "Dawn of Megiddo". The help of the atmospherically-crushing instrument helps as it brings a sense of everlasting doomlike-esque to whole LP.
Moreover, the sound of each of the members and their use of the respective instruments stand out and blend extremely well as mentioned previously. The tone of both the bass and guitar help blend into this behemoth wave of distorted yet organized sound and with it come this overmounting amount of catchy and driving riffs. Nevertheless, the drumming in this album is fantastical as well with no one pattern or beat overstaying its welcome, changing and growing as each song progresses. The changes ranging from slower, doom-dwelled groove to the ever so quick, lightning-paced drumming utilizing double kick pedals. This combined and finely tuned with the deathly, rasped vocals from Tom G. Warrior is what makes this album so great and ahead of the game in 1985.
With this album came its impacts on the genres it touched on and metal as a whole. The consequential spread of this album would inspire many bands, especially on the European side of metal. With the album touching on the likes of doom metal, black metal, thrash metal, and even death metal, it would help grow not just each genre into their respective forms, but other subgenres that would later be formed. With black metal bands like Darkthrone utilizing slower, grooved pacing on "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" to Bolt Thrower's later discography. Big name bands like Obituary and Opeth would also take great inspiration, with both having monolithic covers of "Circle of the Tyrants". Though, there are more bands that could be named off, it can be taken that To Mega Therion is unexceptionally influential in many ways to several subgenres of metal.
Overall, to take away from this album is that Celtic Frost were absolute masters at their craft as To Mega Therion is an incredibly blended and well thought out album that brings the sound of metal of the time into new, untouched territories and more grandiose approaches. From its avant-garde uses of other instruments and effects to the overall instrumentation and the blackened vocal abilities brought to the album. To Mega Therion is also an incredibly influential album to many bands and metal as a whole. Nevertheless, there's not one point in time where this album is a bore or comes off too strong. I consider this album to be perfect, nothing less.

Official promo video: 

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