Terrible and Pointless - "To Mega Therion" Review (6%)
The slow but steady decline of Hellhammer since its inception - or, arguably, since the band transitioned to Celtic Frost - is consistently one of the most depressing yet banal stories in the metal scene today.
From their original height - above average proto-black metal on 'Satanic Rites' -, they've taken a dramatic turn for the worse over the years, culminating in a string of post-Reed St. Mark albums that, shall we say, leave much to be desired.
While when I had purchased this album I knew full well that it was going to be no tour de force, nothing had prepared me for the entirely new level of odious nu metal crap I was about to experience.
Is 'To Mega Therion' a joke? Really, is it a joke? Are we supposed to take this cluttered collection of half-baked concepts, littered with the remains of b-side nu metal riffing and melodramatic vocalizations seriously? Shit like this makes Reinkaos look virile, and modern Sodom look creative by comparison.
Holy Satan, what exactly happened here? While describing Reed-era Celtic Frost as brilliant would be a dramatic stretch of the imagination, they were certainly able to string a few decent songs together per album - 'Into the Crypt of Rays', 'Circle of the Tyrants', etc. - but here they seem completely and utterly devoid of all the talent that they had expressed in their previous albums, particularly those of the Hellhammer era, leaving a bitter, shrunken shell, a proto-Gothenburg husk, of what they used to be, and in the process turning into everything everyone hates about the very worst of American mallcore.
This is terrible music made by posers who, sadly, were once competent musicians.
Terrible and Pointless
Starting off with the tepid instrumental 'Innocence And Wrath', the album doesn't seem utterly terrible at first glance, just dramatically uninspired and lacking the ass-kicking propensity of the 'debut' EP. But hey, it's just the first song, right?
Ok, so 'The Usurper' is pretty bad... but we can't always have a 'Triumph of Death' to tide us over for the meat of the composition, can we?
Well, 'Jewel Throne' should quickly shatter any dreams you had of using superlatives such as 'decent' or 'mediocre' in conjunction with this album. It's pure, unadulterated nu metal shit. Of course that's an anachronistic hyperbole, but it literally sounds like what Slipknot, Watain and Korn would shit out of their collectively prolapsed anuses a few decades later.
Let us look at the stunningly introspective lyrics at work here: 'Necromantical screams / Only you are deaf / Is there life beyond death'. Masterful. I am at loss for words. But I think it falls just short of, I don't know, 'Get low, get low, get low, get low / Brrr dum dum dum, dum da da da da dum / Get low, get low, get low, get low / Stop then wiggle wit it'.
The album, of course, continues roughly in the same vein.
Warrior's growls are particularly weak on this album, and the guitarwork fails to inspire even the slightest bit of emotion or power in the listener, despite the overtly slick and defined production here, much superior to that of any previous Hellhammer/Celtic Frost release. The trend is eerily similar to that of most modern metal, from Mayhem to Darkthrone: better production, and yet nothing else to show for it.
Really, this album seems catchier, poppier and more accessible than anything they've done before. While attributes such as this are something that certain bands are able to pull off without seeming cheesy, that's not the case with Celtic Frost: the half-riffing that fills 'Necromantical Screams', with its weird, bleepy high chords followed by predictable E string chugging will prove that nicely.
Drumming in similarly binary in nature, rock beat, rock beat, d-beat, ignore. There's really not much more to it at all. Surely a disappointment for Celtic Frost that they will never recover from. In the end, the only positive result from this album is having influenced Morbid Angel, mid-era Sewer and black metal (although Bathory is much more important).
Avoid.
To Mega Therion score: 6/100.
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