SO WRONG, IT’S RIGHT #1

I’ll admit: I’m a flamboyant guy from time to time. Even more so, I take great delight in the perverse. Which both jointly explain my fascination with – and undying support for – Celtic Frost’s legendarily maligned Cold Lake.

In full disclosure, I have already written about this record under similar/defend-a-dead-duck circumstances. It was an issue of Zero Tolerance – #016, to be exact – and it was for a regular section called “Missing in Action,” where usually we’d write about a one-album wonder or the like. This time, obviously, it was different because…well, Celtic Frost’s a pretty legendary band in metal circles and, just as obviously, have a sizable (if not spotty, according to some) back catalog. Plus, just earlier, they had re-formed for Monotheist before breaking up yet again in a storm of sour grapes. But the clincher? My byline wasn’t printed! “Get out of jail free” and all that – jackpot!

But in fullest disclosure, and as I’m so fond of saving myself some redundancy (only to be redundantly redundant later on), here’s what I wrote in February 2007:

First things first: I’m well aware that Celtic Frost are no longer “Missing In Action.” Second thing: I’d wager good money that the majority of the folks who bemoan this record, in all actuality, have not heard it.

So, where does that put us? An honest-to-goodness awesome record that few have the guts to step forward and champion, let alone admit having the decency to check out before panning/praising it. Mind you, this isn’t some deliberately contrarian stance simply because it’s Celtic Frost; if that were the case, we might as well trump up St. Anger. No, Cold Lake was an accidental birth, an experiment gone horribly, wonderfully WRONG. That it supposedly sucks is all an urban myth, a record that’s MIA insomuch as CF refusing to reissue it – cue a reference to Bad Religion’s Into The Unknown, while you’re at it – by proxy erasing it from their collective history in an act of 1984-esque doublespeak.

Save for vocalist/guitarist/tyrant Tom Warrior, Frost experienced a complete lineup overhaul on Cold Lake, with guitar-foil Oliver Amberg’s brain-damaged yet expressive soloing being the only real discernible difference, technically speaking, compared to the quintessential Ain/St. Mark lineup. That Tom wrote toward this lineup’s more-streamlined talents or drafted these youngbloods purely on their more accessible abilities is open for debate. What resulted, however, was a perversion/subversion of nascent glam-metal sensibilities – hip-shaking thrust, lyrical/vocal come-ons, cocky swagger, a predilection for drink, women, and maybe velvet – as it was sent through the blender of old, mega-dirty Celtic Frost. It’s not so much that the Form changed; rather, it was the Content.

Thus, Cold Lake became Frost’s “party record,” but no way in hell was this remotely marketable. Tom gets in a few trademark grunts, his incrementally cleaned-up vocals are here sicker and more depraved, the riffs in kind are more smeared and even dangerously sleazy, every song set at a throbbing, percolating up-tempo that had no chance of getting on the radio, much less into strip-club rotation – NOT the stuff of platinum record sales, y’know? Look at it this way: if your “hit” single was the dread monolith of “Cherry Orchards,” which was only a step or two removed from “Procreation of the Wicked,” you’ve just committed commercial suicide. Altogether, then, the record bespeaks a certain evil that’s more tangible, grittier, because it’s an evil that rises from the streets, the gutter, rather than from horror novels or role-playing games. How predecessor Into the Pandemonium is considered so “progressive” – in hindsight, natch – compared to all this is beyond me, as both albums take an equal number of risks.

At the end of the day, whether or not Warrior intended a complete “sellout,” Cold Lake is perfectly in line with Celtic Frost’s iconoclastic nature. No two records of theirs ever sounded alike. Hell, even the equally classic Morbid Tales and To Mega Therion maintain their own unique, respective spheres. In that sense, CF were/are not unlike David Bowie. Just that, thank fuck, they never sunk as low as Let’s Dance. But hey, it’s quite okay to “Dance Sleazy.”

Really, I wanted my byline printed. Like, really really. Thus, hopefully you’ll excuse my compulsion toward doing this here now.

But also really, this record really (“really really”) warrants further inspection, as much I feel I hit the proverbial nail on the head with the above text, given my word-count and deadline back then. When I wrote that, it was during a time when I was beginning to connect, in print and elsewhere, the threads of my past to those of my present: a crucial turning-point in that I’ve followed that path forward/backward in earnest, often to admittedly bizarre ‘n’ bewildering ends, or at least a so-far-up-my-own-ass-end end. (Debate it: go waste your time.) Sure, I’ve recanted my opinion on Let’s Dance, mainly because I now realize Nile Rodgers is THE MAN (hello to Chic, The Power Station, Like a Virgin, Notorious, Sheena Easton’s “When the Lightning Strikes Again,” and a thousand other things) and partly because I get a kick outta running my mouth when my head’s mostly empty, but I stand by what I wrote then…and I’d like to write a little bit more now.

The years have been kind to Celtic Frost’s Cold Lake – my years, at least – in that the gulf between What Was Intended and What Resulted have widened even more, and no amount of musical abortions since have flown so freely ‘n’ fiercely into that abyss of Good Taste vs. Bad Taste. Granted, there’s been more than a few St. Angers in the interim (hello, YOU NAME ‘EM), but I’d argue that that Gulf was never all that wide to begin with in these/those cases, whereas with Cold Lake…well, let’s dive in.

My first exposure to Celtic Frost came with an interview in Metal Maniacs (back when it was print) around the time when Vanity/Nemesis was released. This is what Tom Warrior and crew were looking like then:

Kinda dark, but also kinda suave: I really wouldn’t have known the difference then (I was 12 years old). During the proceeding text, if my memory serves correctly – and it usually does – there was much boo-hooing about some record called Cold Lake. I never heard it, so I was completely lost; I read on regardless. I do know, subsequently, that Mr. Warrior’s one for revisionist history (hello, Are You Morbid?) and he’s totally entitled to that since these are his creations, after all, but I can process them any way I want and he can’t control that, so nah-nah-nah. Anyway, the point is, both him and writer thought the record blew. The band also supposedly had a different, decidedly “poser” image during said record, and it looked something like this:

Now, I know that Those Who Cult will doubtlessly say that such an image is “gay” or what-have-you, but really: WHAT is so wrong with this look? On the whole, it’s a lot cooler than an image that suggests you’ve never felt the touch of a real, live woman (or man, for that matter – erm…). It also suggests fucking PARTY (or even a Fucking Party) – and we should we know what kind of party I mean. And we could also extend “party” to mean a gang or even a political body/entity/PARTY, like these dudes are here at your party and it’s gonna be a hazy, crazy, foggy, mystical time; their cloth and accoutrements exude glitz and sleaze, glamour and grime, sin and seduction, both upward and downward mobility. Those should be eternal ideals in all manner of music(s) and certainly a campaign trail worth blazing, but for the time being, I’ll pull the old Some Other Post.

Ahem. So, where are we at? Ah, yes…The Look. See, the look (or see the look) is merely a physical manifestation of CF circa CL’s overarching spirituality – and by “spirituality,” I’m generally meaning manner of (creative) spirit – which can be dissected via Mr. Warrior’s less-tongue-tied-than-usual poetry across the album. To whit:

Side 1

1)     “Intro – Human”: “For love we crawl / and we’ll be held for all the pain” à the ultimate burden all Party Warriors carry, the latent lament of the Hair Metal Generation

2)     “Seduce Me Tonight”: “Dance on my wounded chest” à that burden again, the dual excitement + sting of love/lust/both/neither/never/again

3)     “Petty Obsession”: “If this is heaven, how bad is hell?” à not a rhetorical question, rather the quest of all Party Warriors, the black (w)hole that forever beckons

4)     “(Once) They Were Eagles”: “Gathering pure sleep / their eyes betrayed” à life is dreams, dreams is mysticism, mysticism is truth(s) – if you dream it, you believe it, and vice versa

5)     “Juices Like Wine”: “Juices like wine / like the blood in the sand” à regardless of simile, not metaphorical, but rather physical: up we sup, down we go

Side 2

1)     “Little Velvet”: “Breathe the taste / of vapor of love” à once again NOT metaphorical; instead, the foul/final realization that love stinks…literally (or maybe Beherit’s “Down There...”)

2)     “Blood on Kisses”: “This is all the jungle voices / deceiving pain through desire” à a party is a jungle, and the jungle means war (spiritually extrapolated in Black Rain’s “Party War”): it’s never over, because the voices keep reverberating in the soul

3)     “Downtown Hanoi”: “Gold and light / didn’t stop their dance” à this Hanoi does not exist; only light, then darkness, exists – and the dance continues, heedless of either, back and forth, because YOU JUST DON’T TURN IT OFF

4)     “Dance Sleazy”: “The mirage of love / to live means hurt” à essentially the just-mentioned duality, but here framed within the first-named burden

5)     “Roses Without Thorns”: “Violet masks of false” à more or less the “If you are a false, do not entry” credo of all Party Warriors worldwide: you must believe it, comrade, for the purple rain shall perpetually fall…

Which all, then, must be supported by a fitting, fit-to-fight soundtrack. In my original ZT piece, I likened sole single “Cherry Orchards” to a “dread monolith.” In fact, nearly every song here is a Dread Monolith. Like the best metal – hell, the BEST MUSIC – each song pretty much hinges upon one hook, maybe two if only faintly different, and then proceeds to pulse it out, on and on and on, hereby hypnotizing with motorik swagger/swaggering motor-locution. (In a metallic context, also see Ratt’s disarmingly spar(s)e Dancing Undercover or especially Motorhead’s mesmerizing Another Perfect Day ­– Some Other Post?) You should be able to “rock out,” as the vernacular goes, but instead you’re stuck in that Party War, and it rages on (and on and on and…) in your soul, psyche, gutter of a mind, mind in a gutter, whichever, wherever, whenever. This is serious business. And I doubt that was the intention. Either way, Cold Lake takes you where you wanna go and then you go/go/go, on/on/on. (Even the way that sentence is written underlines the seismic pulse at play.)

This, folks, is mysticism defined. Crucial to that crux is the record’s duality/singularity of space + spaciousness, arguably THE musical earmark of the ‘80s as a whole. Whether it’s in the production (likely/usually) or in the playing itself, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is where you end up.

(And, a good deal of the time, Where I End Up is casting Cold Lake’s net across to other Party Warriors in the synth funk/lazer soul field, which, in this battered ‘n’ bruised mind of mine, is mystically aligned to hair metal, ‘80s goth/deathrock, and, of course, black metal. Believe me: one day I WILL explain all this in further detail. But in the meantime, look at the above Party War-ready photo of Celtic Frost and then compare it to this:

…and maybe this:

…but especially this:

Which, as snyth-funking Party Warriors all, are spiritual kin to the lazer-souling Mystical Affluence [remember: upward/downward mobility] of, say, this:

And just to prove I’m not talking entirely outta my ass, “Intro – Human” is entirely funk. So there.)

Today, I find Oliver Amberg’s soloing less expressive than I once thought, and even less brain-damaged – save for the Greg Ginn-esque explosions during the midway point of “Downtown Hanoi,” which sound more fucked than ever – while discovering an almost-wooden, favorably martial flavor to the band’s playing across the LP (read: IT’S NOT THE PRODUCTION, YOU NERDS). Elsewhere, Mr. Warrior positively/negatively seethes with sleaze and darkness – as does the music in kind, of course – once again supporting my claim that Cold Lake is a close runner-up to To Mega Therion as the ultimate Celtic Frost statement. Or at least the statement I want them making. Whichever.

Now, as far as What Was Intended vs. What Resulted? Again, I cannot presume to know Mr. Warrior’s initial motivations here; part of me suspects it was a desire to connect with the opposite sex, which is entirely noble. If it was indeed a bid to “sell out,” I can definitely presume that Mr. Warrior didn’t do his market research, because most of Cold Lake moves much too fast (to Mega Therion, ha) for that Hair Metal Generation (or Pube Metal Generation, going by Amberg’s button-down attire in said above photo). Similarly, his lyrics, as ever, aim for High Art whilst being written by a non-native English speaker, and any attempt at “communication” to a wide(r) audience are exacerbated by Warrior’s still-not-clean-enough snarl that maybe wanted to be a Pearcy or a Lawless or even Lord Axl himself but ultimately just ended up sounding like The Devil’s emissary, only clad in flashier threads and without a limousine reservation. And I can definitely live with that.

And yes, I’m being serious. Very fucking SERIOUS – seriously seriously. Again, this is serious business, and I’m serious about it. (And, of course, redundantly redundant.)

So, here’s my challenge: track down Cold Lake, disregard the band photo and the song titles, crank some more bass on your EQ, and try - JUST TRY - telling me that this record couldn’t follow To Mega Therion or at least the grossly overrated Into the Pandemonium. Really, go do it. And, as the vernacular goes, COME AT ME BRO.

Oh, and because I’m a flamboyant-but-more-so-perverse kind of guy, I think I’m gonna make this a semi-regular series. Next up, soon enough: my defense for Discharge’s Grave New World.

…and see how those rotten tomatoes fly!