Celtic Frost "Vanity / Nemesis" CD

How the hell does one make up for an album such as "Cold Lake?" Answer: You don't. Your band who was a highly revered, innovative, mega cult-like band that made such an impressionable and highly resonating mark in Metal's golden era gets the silent treatment for turning in an album that is still to this day considered one of the worst point's in the historical timeline of the musical genre. Sorry Jack, it's not going to start winning your points back from such a commercial suicide/fallout. That's just the sad truth. But all in all even if it was a rough period in one's career it's also now looked upon as a underrated album. It is, "Vanity/Nemesis" is a vastly underrated album, but it isn't in the fact that it's an album that is more or less considered make-up sex in the weird relationship between a band and their loyal fans. Tom G. Warrior and company got caught with their pants down and now are trying to be all "Baby I love you, don't leave me!" Shawanda is going to tell yo black ass off on Maury next Tuesday.
Like many older interviews with Tom G. Warior, he's more than likely explained himself about the somewhat erratic/bi-polar behavior of post "Into The Pandemonium" era of CF, and I'll be honest I've completely forgotten those excuses not just due out of being a fan but probably because I think such trivial things are meant to be forgotten because simply put, they are purely trivial. Again, as stated this was more or less an album to make up for "Cold Lake". It does. Once you actually sit down and listen to this, the first thing that pops into your head is "Holy shit! This is pretty damn good considering all things." I mean if the opening riff from "The Heart Beneath" doesn't get you playing air-guitar to that heavy-as-fuck DUN DUN DUN DUN DUNNA DUN DUN DUN DUN DUNNA riff from hell and the classic Warrior grunt then you're in denial. It's a thrashy little diddly that works like a charm in trying to get the fan to listen. Even the following song "Wine In My Hand" continues it and goes at a faster tempo. But that's what the big difference about "Vanity/Nemesis" is: another major change in the CF sound. Don't expect "Morbid Tales", or "To Mega Therion". This is a more classic 80's thrash sound based CF instead of the innovative extreme Metal sound they help created. The music is still heavy, still chunky sounding, and still evil-sounding....but "Vanity/Nemesis" sounds more like a Coroner album if anything.
Prime examples of this new Coroner sound would be songs such as "The Name of My Bride", "A Kiss Or A Whisper"(which this actually one song that mixes CF and Coroner), so forth and so on. Which is GOOD considering everything else. Plus this new Cornoer-esque edge/sound to their brand of molten metal is somewhat expected since main man Tom G. Warrior helped catapult Coroner into the trash scene to become a generally respected technical Thrash monster when a lot of other bands who tried to be technical fell short of the promise of mind-massacring metal. You also have songs that somewhat resonate an "Into the Pandemonium"-vibe with "The Wings Of Solitude" and even a certain song that starts out with the epic screams to Morbid Tales "Human" intro on the song "Nemesis".....as a previous review said, this album is slightly inconsistent. This album is a showcase of CF trying to pull every trick from it's hat to win back fans and it shows. Again, this is by no means a bad album in the least bit. The production is excellent. The riffs are there. Everything that is Celtic Frost is there, but it's like two different albums put into one and when you combine that and the fallout from "Cold Lake", you're going to have an album that more or less is for serious die-hard fans only.
To sum this album up it's a bit more challenging. It's Celtic Frost that's for sure. If you were to mix it with a more thrashy Coroner-edge with certain sounds from their first 3 albums and an early 90's sound production on top of it sounding like two albums combined into one album AND it being this "back-to-basics" type album, you would get "Vanity/Nemesis"; a massively underrated mixed bag of goodies for the die-hard CF fan.

Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Official promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...