These Vocals Make Me Want To Drown In A Cold Lake

Presenting, The Longest Article Anyone Has Ever Written About Cold Lake...

Celtic Frost was an extremely unique band that needs no introduction. I was originally introduced to Celtic Frost through a mix of Black Metal documentaries a coworker would lend me when I was starting to get into the genre. Ranging from extremely low-budget independent productions to films like Until The Light Takes Us, these documentaries would play an important role in developing my interest in Black Metal. Obviously, Tom G. Warrior featured heavily across most of the documentaries. If he was not being interviewed, his band was being talked about by prominent Black Metal musicians. I would listen to Morbid Tales and To Mega Therion shortly after, and I was (obviously) impressed by the band’s songwriting and sound across both albums. I borrowed a copy of Into The Pandemonium from the same coworker I got the Black Metal documentaries from, and was thoroughly weirded out by that experience. Having finished running through Into The Pandemonium a couple times, I asked the coworker if he had the next album in Celtic Frost’s discography.

“Oh nah, nobody has a copy of Cold Lake… The band won’t even talk about that album…”

People, including the members of Celtic Frost, love to hate on Cold Lake. Digging through some archived blogs and reviews from the early 2000’s, it is apparent that many felt betrayed by the band upon the release of Cold Lake in ’88. In hindsight, I believe the progression from Into The Pandemonium to the glam sound of the next album makes more sense than many care to admit.  But it is undeniable this was an odd transition for a band that just four years earlier was laying the foundation for how second-wave Black Metal would look and sound. Obviously, since the band has collectively disowned this record, Cold Lake is shrouded in a degree of mystery. Over the course of 36 years, however, Tom Warrior has issued a handful of statements regarding the production and release of the album. Celtic Frost had hit a stride in the years before and immediately following the release of Into The Pandemonium. The band was playing shows in North America and Europe, headlining tours, and playing on television. Perhaps in spite of this success, and following a frustrating end to the “One In Their Pride” tour in 87-88, Tom Warrior would elect to end the band. In mid-1988, former Hellhammer contributor Oliver Amburg would encourage Warrior to reform Celtic Frost with the support of the somewhat legendary heavy music producer, Tony Platt. Platt was famous for having worked with AC/DC, Cheap Trick, Bob Marley, Iron Maiden, and many others. Facing encouragement from their label at the time, Noise Records, this reformation would result in the sound/image the band would adopt for Cold Lake… a half-cocked glam/hair metal album steeped in infamy. Celtic Frost is a project rooted in experimentation and the avant-garde. Tom Warrior and Martin Ain dissolved Hellhammer in ’84 because they believed the band had too many creative “borders.” Celtic Frost was an attempt to defy “borders” of metal music, which was far too limited in the minds of Warrior and Ain when they decided to form their new band. Many fail to realize how ambitious a project Celtic Frost was, especially for the early 80’s. Following the successes of Celtic Frost thanks largely to Noise Records and Kerrang! Magazine, the band reached a level of success with Into The Pandemonium that I doubt Warrior or Ain were truly prepared for. Warrior cites in an ’89 interview (Link) that the band fractured in ’87 due to Ain’s difficulties balancing his life in Switzerland with the band’s constant touring. Ain was burned out, and Warrior felt like he was doing most of the creative work. The result, in the end, would be Cold Lake… Universally hated upon its release and subsequently disavowed by the band in the years following the release. In recent years, many have begun to revisit Cold Lake. It is not a “hidden gem,” but it is worth listening to especially for fans of Celtic Frost. Not only could Cold Lake be taken as an unintentional critique of hair metal and the culture it spawned in the early 80’s. But it also takes Black Metal in an artistic direction that deals with excess, hedonism, and nihilism in a totally unique way for the genre.

If I had to describe Cold Lake in one word, it would be warped. The record is ambitious in the same vein as previous Celtic Frost albums, Cold Lake is just a total break from the traditional formula of the band. It is obvious to me that Tom Warrior is trying to up the ante here. However, unlike Into The Pandemonium, Celtic Frost had completely abandoned the avant-garde and embraced pandering to the mainstream. I do not like it, but that is one way to “up the ante.” The money being generated by the band, in addition to pressure from Noise Records and the cultural fallout of early late-stage Glam/Hair metal created an interesting moment that Celtic Frost would attempt to take advantage of. I think the intro track, “Human,” is a perfect microcosm of everything going on with the record. I expected an ambient intro from Celtic Frost, and I got a bizarre throbbing baseline with disembodied African-American voices grunting as Ollie Amburg lazily shreds in the background. There is a moment as the “Human” track transitions into the opening riff for “Seduce Me Tonight” (possibly the worst Black Metal song title ever) where the gravity of what Celtic Frost is doing begins to sink in.

There are decent Celtic Frost-style riffs and songs on this album, despite the bizarre delivery and obviously forced songs about seducing women. Songs on Cold Lake follow a predictable trajectory; beginning with a half-cocked glam-style lick followed by a more quintessential, Celtic Frost style heavy guitar riff. Cold Lake is like listening to a scrapped Mötley Crüe record on ketamine. Part of the appeal of hair metal is how effortless bands make the execution feel. The “classic” period of Celtic Frost from ’84-’87 is effortlessly dark and avant-garde. Everything on Cold Lake feels and sounds laborious. Despite this, the essence of Celtic Frost shines through. Despite the backlash and Celtic Frost’s blatant attempt to “sell out,” there are a few interesting things happening on an aesthetic level in Cold Lake. This record does manage real darkness through its strained delivery and confused songwriting. I have heard from several sources that Tom has always been difficult to work with, but the Cold Lake sessions took this to a new level. I managed to dig up an interview the producer of Cold Lake, Tony Platt, did with Full In Bloom a couple years ago (Link). In the interview Platt mentions how difficult it was working with Tom Warrior, going into detail about what an asshole he was to the studio staff and his bandmates. Apparently, Tom made the drummer Steven Priestly cry on a few occasions and encouraged the band to trash the studio after every session. I believe Warrior let his ego completely consume him and Celtic Frost’s artistic process. This is the darkness that is communicated through Cold Lake. It is a Black Metal band struggling with success, getting lost in the cultural milieu of the “rock and roll” lifestyle. The cover of the album is perfect, encapsulating the spirit of the experience in a succinct package. The original Celtic Frost logo that helped establish the “traditional” standard of Black Metal band logos had been replaced. On Cold Lake, there is a huge dynamic “CF” woven together on the front cover. The logo is clearly evoking bands like Judas Priest and Dokken with contrasting colors and diagonal lines that impart speed and energy. This new logo is front and center amidst a sharply contrasting violet and black marbled background. I like to think of this as the… Cold Lake Celtic Frost is drowning in. Even without listening to the album or knowing its history, you get a taste for the band’s confusion and isolation through the cover. The new fake machismo of Celtic Frost in the middle of a dark, swirling sea of uncertainty. The photo of Celtic Frost on the back of the LP is completely ridiculous and probably one of the worst photos a Black Metal band has put on an album. Any illusion of edgy “rock and roll” iconoclasm or masculinity is totally shattered by this photograph. Oliver Amburg looks like he’s twelve, Curt Victor Bryant looks like he would try to molest teenage girls, “Thomas Gabriel” looks like an ugly weirdo that’s trying too hard, and Stephen Priestly almost looks like he belongs in a metal band. That being said, I have never seen a physical copy of Cold Lake. But the images online look decent. I can wrap my head around why I would pick this off the shelf at a record store and buy it, especially if it was the new Celtic Frost album. It is odd looking packaging, but I could anticipate Celtic Frost doing something like this. Despite that, I can hear the untold thousands of Black Metal aficionados screaming in horror through the veil of time as I make my way through the music on this album. To be fair, Cold Lake is not horrible. But compared to the highpoints of Celtic Frost’s discography, it falls utterly flat. There’s nothing to get passionate about or dig into regarding the content of individual songs. There are decent riffs and semi-interesting sequences that evoke the motifs of classic Celtic Frost. But so much noise and confusion are stacked onto the experience through the forced inclusion of inept, shitty hair metal riffs and licks. If I had to pick a favorite track, it would probably be “Downtown Hanoi,” on account of how totally ridiculous it is in concept. The chorus is decent, and I believe the wacky hair metal stuff they work into the riffs sounds better than most of the album’s other disjointed sequences. “Cherry Orchards” (obviously) is the other song that comes to mind when I think about Cold Lake. It is probably the track that sounds the most like a serious Celtic Frost song. That being said, it still sounds off. The leadup to “Cherry Orchards” is agonizing, with the tracks “Petty Obsession” and “(Once) They Were Eagles” serving as the album’s anti-climax on account of how painfully mediocre they are. I have waited until this point to really dig into the music of the album because, in my opinion, this is the least interesting part of Cold Lake. Even with Into The Pandemonium, a record I dislike and hardly ever listen to, I can acknowledge the band is trying to do something with the music. Cold Lake is an experience that lacks depth and represents what happens when a band listens to the record executives. In spite of the music, Celtic Frost does do something interesting with Cold Lake that I believe is worth looking into…

While it may have been accidental, Cold Lake is a Black Metal record that exposes cracks in the “kayfabe” of hair metal. Kayfabe is a great term that has gradually become part of my lexicon. It describes the way professional wrestlers present rehearsed performances as completely authentic and spontaneous. Hair metal functioned in a similar way. The kayfabe here is the idea that Glam was not the artificial creation and performance built by artists and labels. What began as an authentic metal subculture in the late 1970’s quickly became a mass-marketed product that sold an extreme, decadent, and unsustainable lifestyle as a matter of course. Glam built its aesthetic off a deeply aristocratic, epicurean urge. It is ironic. Like many aristocracies throughout history, hedonism eroded the culture of the music from the inside, allowing external forces to destroy it. In the late 80’s, hair metal was driven largely by huge music labels that tightly curated the image of the bands. The music slowly became secondary to the band’s image and public performance. This is what led to what I will call, “Horseshoe hyper-masculinity,” which was one of the final nails in Glam’s coffin. There were elements of this “Horseshoe hyper-masculinity” baked into the genre’s DNA from its inception in the late 70’s. But this reached a point where labels, attempting to up the ante, began encouraging hair metal bands to embrace an overtly gay and feminine style in their fashion and image. I believe one of the things that killed hair metal in the 90’s was when grunge bands began calling it G.L.A.M. (Gay Los Angeles Metal). People were fed up because Glam had become totally unrelatable, it had failed to evolve over the decades and people grew tired of the repetitive artificial performance of decadence that had become completely predictable.  

As a Black Metal record, Cold Lake can be interpreted as a critique of hair metal and the production ecosystem that would sow the seeds of the genre’s decline in the following years. Cold Lake exposes the cracks, accelerating and reinforcing the idea that bands embrace this sound and absurd image for monetary gain. Compared to the dense lyrics on Morbid Tales and To Mega Therion, Celtic Frost’s third album really spits in the face of listeners expecting a similar experience. I can imagine members of Mötley Crüe getting seduced by women insane parties… Imagining Tom Warrior in the same situation is a total stretch, which is part of what makes the album opener, “Seduce Me Tonight,” so ridiculous. The band has not published lyrics for over half of this record, and my impression is they would not be worth reading even if they were publicly available. It emphasizes how ridiculous the hyper-masculine charade of hair metal can get, especially when bands (like Celtic Frost) force it. The image that formed the foundation of hair metal was beginning to erode by the time Cold Lake arrived. By the early 90’s, many of the bands that made the core of the subculture would disband and hair metal would experience a soft-apocalypse. Before the 90’s tore Glam apart, bands like Celtic Frost were eating away at the genre’s foundations. Cold Lake is an implicit attack on the pseudo-futurist epicurean aesthetic of the genre, because it’s a clumsy attempt to rip Glam’s most boilerplate elements for profit. At the time, fans obviously thought Celtic Frost was selling out with Cold Lake. While it seems the mainstream music media was relatively even-handed with Cold Lake, the Black Metal fans that had grown to respect Celtic Frost felt massively betrayed by this attempt to pander to a more mainstream audience. For those that enjoyed Black Metal and the classic period of Celtic Frost, the aesthetics associated with hair metal immediately became associated with bands selling out. If the allure of fame and money through adoption of the Glam aesthetic was great enough to entice the legendary Celtic Frost, then it was something worth hating. Now, I have a better understanding of why grunge and nu-metal artists were lining up to hate on hair metal in the 90’s. It was a kayfabe that was barely believable for the ten years it was popular. After numerous high-profile overdoses and deaths began to surround bands like Mötley Crüe, the “magic” of Glam largely faded away. They were, in the end, just mundane drug users like the rest of us.

            Before I started writing this article, I considered myself a Cold Lake enjoyer. However, I do not believe I would go out of my way to listen to album ever again. It comes down to this, Cold Lake is a novel experience for fans of Celtic Frost and first-wave Black Metal. Most of the enjoyment people get from listening stems from how strange the riffs are and unusual the production sounds. There is an interesting thread about how the record incidentally challenges the authenticity of Glam, but listening to the entire record is unnecessary in drawing this conclusion. Interestingly enough, listening to this record has given me an even greater reverence for Celtic Frost. They were brave enough, and had enough integrity as artists to disown this album and refuse repressing it for profit in subsequent years. Especially from Tom Warrior’s perspective, I could see how this would be a record and era worth disowning. I would buy a copy of Cold Lake simply to own it, but I would like to dispel any idea that I enjoy this Cold Lake post-publication of this article.

This article is a behemoth. Who would waste so much time writing an attempt at intellectual analysis of a throwaway Blackened Glam album from 1988?

Me.

Hail the Fuckin’ Underground Boys…