By: Anders

Posted: Jun 20, 2006

Since Celtic Frost got back together and a new album was rumoured and then later on confirmed. The hype concerning the new album has been going sky high. Then Peter Tägtgren, a vivid Celtic Frost fan, is being brought onboard to co-produce the album, together with the band, to get the real sound. Then all us Frost maniacs started to believe that the band had gone back to their old sound and style, the metal that made the band known and the style that revolutionized metal genres.

Well, as it often is with such comeback albums as this, the fans tend to get disappointed, as bands seldom can live up to the reputation and deliver music as good as their old valued gems. Though it doesn't take many spins of this record, to find out that Celtic Frost, the real Celtic Frost is back. There are insanely many references back to the classic Frost albums. There are raw and eerie passages, haunting and black, setting one 20 years back, amazing. Though it isn't the old style all the way through, the band still likes to experiment and they do that, but most of it, are some of the formulas they have used in the past, so it do not end up weird or unfitting. The band has dug deep into the past, without loosing their creativity and abilities of progression, and has been able to compose songs that resemble classic Frost, without them sounding outdated, but very fitting here in 2006.

The songs do shift some between the one and other period of Frost, we have a track like 'Ain Elohim' which are classic Frost, we have the track 'Obscured', where Tom's vocals are haunted by a female voice, a track that could have been on "Into The Pandemonium". The opener 'Progeny' is classic Frost, perhaps even Hellhammer, due to the simplicity, though in a modern, quite groovy wrapping. My fave on the album is 'A Dying God Coming Into Human Form', a dark, haunted and quite epic track, on the experimenting side again. As written earlier there are many references to the band's glorious past, though they seldom sound like a bad rehash of themselves and their past, they have been able to push forward, without loosing their identity as Celtic Frost, which unfortunately happened back in the days, before they disbanded.

This album does live up to the hype there has been created, no doubt of that. It is not the best Celtic Frost album out there, but it is up there among the good ones. Older fans can without fear take a listen to this, and newcomers can start here and then go back to the start… I am a bit impressed with the impact this album has, and beware, it'll grow for each listen it gets, it only becomes better and better, and it is damn addictive, a feature it shares with the band's 3 first releases.

Rating: 8½/10

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