Customer Reviews

Monotheist

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Here's another release from a band that had been dormant for years, so here's the verdict: Monotheist is just pure greatness. I was never a fan of the experimental side of Celtic Frost, and while there's some experimentation in here to a greater degree, it all works organically to achieve some scary results. The album is also full of slow, crushing riffing akin to their Morbid Tales debut, which makes Monotheist one of the heaviest experiences you'll ever come across. The songs are lengthy and repetitious and that's what makes them effective. While it's hard to classify this opus, it's safe to say that it's a doom metal album. There's a lot of stuff going on, it never gets boring. Listen deep into the music and you'll find something new by each listen. Tom's vocals are harsh, brutal and mysterious, and the production is exceptional. Great comeback album, I give my respect to Frost for such a masterpiece. One of the best albums of 2006 so far!

Don't expect another "To Mega Therion," anytime soon, folks. In fact, don't expect anything remotely predictable, up-tempo, or straight-forward, because "Monotheist" is far from any of that. With this comeback album, Celtic Frost not only immerse, but glorify themselves on their new brand of experimental, hellish, and doom-laden metal. The most explicit song you'll find on this album is the opening 2 tracks, "Progeny," and "Ground." After that, it's a dive into the obscure, the unknown, and the occult.

Peter Tagtren's production brings out the bleak, menacing, and suffocating undertones on this album wonderfully. Tom's vocals are abysmal, dark, and truly PISSED. Guitars are tuned REALLY low, which help add some gut-level punch, and the drums, as always at Abyss Studios, are produced wonderfully. The electronic elements aren't distracting, and actually add a more modern, sophisticated edge to the goth-laced doom metal. The song "Drown in Ashes" features spacious synths, detached female vocals, and lurching bass lines while still being able to fit in with the likes of the next track, "Os Abysmi Vel Daath," which is probably one of the most ominus, blackened doom metal songs I've heard in a while.

By integrating an occult influence into the music, the album is made that much darker. The closing trinity of the album features invocations written in German and Latin, and the slug-paced metal, resonating with feedback and hellish ambience, makes it come to life. All of the lyrics are explained in the booklet, and even for a very educated person of the occult, you would be baffled at the depth of the lyrics and can truly tell that there is some time and effort put into these works.

While old-schoolers may shake their heads in disapproval, lovers of the more obscure side of metal, such as myself, will be delighted at the sheer crushing weight of this album.

Being a fan of the band since the Hellhammer days I stopped buying their music after the incredible 'Into the Pandemonium', due to the band changing their sound to a more commercial/poser type of thing. Vanity/Nemesis, as far as I was concerned was still too commercial and lacked what Frost was about. 14 years later Warrior and Ain and 2 others have put together one of the heaviest releases, ever!! This is so incredible, not sure where to begin. The songs as a whole are slower, even venturing into old Cathedral and Winter, in terms of slow heavy dirge. But there are still midpaced and some fast trax. They have incorporated a little goth into the mix and the avant garde atmosphere surrounds this cd, much like Into the Pandemonium. The opening track Progeny is brilliant. It's fast, slow and has some great Warrior grunts on the tune. Really the cd just gets better. The female guest vocals are back and just add to the atmosphere. This cd is Evil, I imagine this is what hell would sound like, if it created music. A very dark and emotional cd. Some people have said the songs are not as catchy as some of their past songs. This is simply not true, the songs are very catchy and memorable. If you were a true Celtic Frost fan back in the day and have also matured with time you will no doubt love this cd. If you were a frost fan, but are still stuck in the past, you will have trouble with this cd, no super fast songs like Jewel Throne or Visual Aggression, however the band is 100% Celtic Frost and this is the best cd of 2006!

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I first heard this album. Would Celtic Frost make another To Mega Therion, or Into The Pandemonium? The answer is neither, actually. Monotheist is a monolithic slab of black-as-coal doom metal with avant-garde leanings. The low-end, sludgy guitars slither like snakes, and similarly lash out in thrashier moments unexpectedly. Everything-- The forboding french horn, random blurbs of guitar feedback, crawling riffs, bleak lyrics-- have been deliberately placed to cast a cold and oppressive atmosphere beyond mortal comprehension. Peter Tagtgren's abyssic production just lends another icy layer of hopelessness to the lurid mix. Tom's gruff vocals are practically unchanged, though he attempts a dual-vocal delivery with some shakey clean vocals. He still can't hold a melody, but at least it's better than his past tries at singing.

The rythmic authority of aggro-metal tracks like Ground and Ain Elohim evoke the power of their earlier stuff, while things are kept varied with experimental songs such as Obscured and Totengott. The former evokes a tragic melody that average gothic tripe found of MTV could only dream of, whereas the latter is a nerve-wrecking industrial soundscape featuring Martin Eric Ain's fierce black metal shrieks. But the album's highlight is Synagoga Satanae, an epic featuring Satyr that sums up why Celtic Frost is such a widely revered band.

A sinister and challenging return to form for Frost. Black metal album of the year, anyone?
- Thus says the Pellington

Cold Lake sucked balls and Vanity/Nemesis was a half assed attempt at a comeback (Tom, your vocals sucked on that album).

Monotheist? Awesome CD!
It has that old Frost heaviness mixed in with some Apollyon Sun (very underrated band) and some new stuff. I like the fact that these guys arent afraid to try new things while they also remain faithful to their original sound and vision. Probably one of the best albums of the year and well worth the wait. Buy it!

For over almost two decades I had given up the possibility of Celtic Frost creating anything resembling decent metal music.
Two years ago all my suspicions were confirmed after listening to Tom Warrior's weak showing on the Probot album.
When i heard Celtic Frost were going to release a new album, i chuckled, "twenty years too late" and dismissed the whole thing as a joke, but when i heard other fellow amazon.com reviewers rave about the album, i knew i had to check it out.

So, what does the new 2006 Celtic Frost Monotheist sound like? does it sound like the old school Celtic Frost we know and love?
Monotheist is extremely heavy, as a matter of fact it is heavier in sound than anything the band has released so far.
Twenty years have gone by and digital technology has in no doubt enabled Tom Warrior to create a punishing guitar sound that is extremely heavy without resorting to the standard nu-metal downtuned guitars.
All the original elements of Celtic Frost are there, the atmospheric sounds, the drama, the female vocals, the heavyness, combined with gothic and industrial undertones that in no way overpower the music.
If you like Celtic Frost's early albums, the opening track "Progeny" will bring a smile to your face, and remind you why Celtic Frost were once upon a time one of the most influential metal bands of all time.
The rest of the album has many moods, showing without a doubt that Tom Warrior has expanded his musical vocabulary in all these years of musical silence.

Kudos to Mr. Warrior for not resorting to re-hashing old material like some of the 80' metal bands are doing.. He's created something that still sounds like Celtic Frost and still manages to be new and original.

After a fifteen year wait tom and the boys are back! As for the cd being dark and scary i'm not sure. I have had a year filled with great loss and I find songs like Ground and A dying god to be uplifting because I know i'm not alone in my feelings. Alot of fans will say this doesn't matchup to the classics but it does deliver and I think it is way better than most of us could have hoped. Progeny is a monster too. I think it is great that celtic frost is not afraid to challenge their auidence and expand their sound. Their is nothing worse than a band of middle age men trying to stay 18 ( I'm talking to you slayer). Favorite track so far isdrown in ashes with a female singer dueting with the frost Amazing.

Celtic Frost released the heavy, avante-garde, and downright weird "Into the Pandemonium" in 1987, and it instantly became one of the greatest metal albums of all time (along with Voivod's "Nothingface", Tool's "Aenima," and Opeth's "Blackwater Park"). So, you have to handicap the first Frost release in 16 years - there is no way they can top themselves, even though most have probably forgiven Thomas G. for the "Cold Lake" debacle. But this is more complicated than that.

"Monotheist" quite possibly is the heaviest metal album ever recorded. Ever. This thing is a beast. While there are "One In Their Pride"-type experimental moments, Celtic Frost's comeback CD will generally leave your eardrums throbbing.

The sound is somewhat reminiscent of the band's "Morbid Tales"-era Frost, with emphasis on the slower, doomier songs like "Procreation of the Wicked." But "Monotheist" is 21st century metal, and tight as hell - a pummelling update of late 80's pre-black metal thrash. And the song topics are about as dark as you can get, with the weaving concept of a man, or a god, or both, trying to find one's place in reality.

"Domain of Decay" is the absolute standout. I can't listen to that track enough. And I love the fact that Thomas G. has returned his vocals to their earlier state: angry, intense, and powerful, rather than that whiny, glam-rock purr he used in Cold Lake, the one that somehow filtered into "Vanity/Nemesis." (A quick note about that one: "Vanity/Nemesis" probably would have been considered a decent record if it wasn't preceded by "Cold Lake." But it wasn't good enough to make us forget. "Monotheist" has obliterated all memory of "Cold Lake," and then some.)

"Monotheist" should be in any metalhead's CD collection. As the header suggests, it is one of the top 10 metal albums ever released. Celtic Frost, the legendary band from Switzerland, has shown they are heavier, darker, and better than the rest. And maybe even better than that. It just took them nearly two decades to go out and prove it again.

To paraphrase the great F.D.R., 'May 30, 2006, a date that will live in (metal) infamy.' Why? This will be remembered as the day that the great Celtic Frost released Monotheist and re-defined metal once again. Tom and company have raised the bar once again for what is destined to be an all time metal classic. For those who like myself have followed Celtic Frost since the release of Morbid Tales, you will not be disappointed in the slightest. It is an album that simply defies a label. To give an aural description that might conjure up some relevance, Monotheist combines the sheer heaviness of To Mega Therion and a touch of the brilliant abstractness that graced Into The Pandemonium. Also, the heavy mindbending riffs that permeated both of Hellhammer's releases Apocalyptic Raids and the Satanic Rites Demo, are present here as well. If you have never been fortunate enough to hear the Frost before, this is a great place to start. The classic Frost sound(which has influenced untold numbers of today's metal musicians) has been preserved and does not sound arcane in the least. Conversely, Tom did not attempt to "modernize" Monotheist. The production is awesome and there is not a weak track on the entire cd. The lyrics are standard Tom Fischer and Martin Ain fare: death, deities and the existence thereof. If you have not purchased this cd, do so without hesitation! It will no doubt become one of the most important metal releases of the next several years.

In a world of weak metal comebacks after so many years of obsoleteness, if someone had told me a year ago that Celtic Frost was going to release another album, I would have simply shrugged it off. I've been dissapointed WAY too many times. Until now. Monotheist, the latest effort from Celtic Frost is probably going to be remembered as one of the most amazing comebacks in metal history--and what better band to do it? How does it sound? Well, that brings me to the title of my review...because when I listened to it for the first time, I kept thinking "how on Earth did this happen". Well, that's just it. I don't think it happened ON Earth. It sounds more like the band traveled to the center of the earth, forged their instruments from molten nickel and used the natural acoustics from the bowels of the earth. It has a life of it's own. It's probably the most dense and thick, yet amazingly produced sound I've heard. They took the classic guitar sound from Morbid Tales and made it even more powerful. Tom's vocals are more menacing than ever. The drums and bass are clearly audible. This album is LOUD. I usually play CD's at somewhere around volume "20" in my car; I'm hard pressed to crank this one past "15" for fear that my jalopy will crumble under the crushing weight that is Monotheist. In a world of forgettable Nu metal bands and pathetic comebacks, this is one not to be forgotten. Evil never sounded so good......; )