Celtic Frost-Monotheist, 2006

These guys were truly heavy and quite honestly verging on greatness between 1984 and 1987. Then in 1988 they released Cold Lake which was a stab at making a quick buck and it failed. The band lost a lot of fans, but they returned three years later with Vanity/Nemesis which was a good album. However the damage was done and metal had changed so they broke up not too long after that. Here in recent years the rumors were going on that singer/guitarist Tom G. Warrior and bass player Martin Ain were putting the band back together and working on new material. Now it's out, the first new studio album in 15 years. Cold Lake was a long time ago so all is forgiven and the slate is wiped clean. So what do we have on this new offering? First, this was tough to get through. Not tough because of any real shortcomings, but mainly tough because it's a complicated album that required several listens for me to determine what I really thought of it. I wanted to be fair and I think that I have worked it out. It's very good, but not quite great or at least I don't think so yet. Celtic Frost developed very quickly back in the 80's and I think they became leaders very fast. Other than the mistake of Cold Lake, these guys were leaders rather than followers. This album is generally slower than much of their earlier material, but perhaps heavier than most of it. Twenty years ago there weren't the kind of sub genre labels that there are now. I listened to Celtic Frost back then and they were largely labeled as speed metal or just plain metal by those that thought they were not fast enough to be speed metal. However they were a large influence on bands that are now labeled black and doom metal even though those two genres are very different from each other. This new album is largely doom metal which means it's slow and very heavy. The first three tracks on this album have some seriously sick and twisted riffs that are heavy enough that you feel it in your spine and I do consider that to be a good thing. The next few tracks throw in more odd vocal parts and different effects and it just didn't totally work for me. It did grow on me some, but not as effective as the first few tracks. The rest of the songs are generally very good with a few great ones mixed in. The strength of the album is how they are capable of getting a lot out of just a few notes. Most doom bands think of heaviness and pace while Celtic Frost seem to be thinking of those things, but they are also thinking of tones. At their best on this album they don't just follow the pace, but they control and twist it. Unfortunately there are times on this album when it's slow without a whole lot going on and that's where I get lost. It's certainly not boring, but I feel like they could have done more at times. I do have to give credit to the band for being very ambitious with this album. Many bands doing reunion or comeback albums fail because they either try to exactly what they did in their prime or they try to do a style that is popular today just because it's popular. Monotheist has a definite sound of the Celtic Frost of old, but they made a great effort to move forward as well. It didn't work 100%, but it's a hell of a try and there is enough here for me to say that not only are they back, but they move towards the front of the class. This is a not an album for everyone, but if you like your metal very heavy and sort of slow then it's worth the time and effort it will take to get into this one.