METAL HELL: How did the new songs take shape?

MARTIN ERIC AIN: It was completely different from anything we had done before cause to begin with, this wasn’t only about writing songs, this was about becoming a band again, forming a unit, trying to discover what Celtic Frost was about in the new millennium & what it meant to us in the first place back in the day. In one way we were intellectually traveling back, & I mean intellectually because we didn’t play any of the old songs to get back into shape. We said we wanna refrain from that, we don’t wanna fall into the classic trap that a lot of bands that are trying to come back do, trying to rehash the old glory days. We didn’t wanna do that. We started out basically writing songs from what we felt. We were experimenting around in the beginning much like we did with Into The Pandemonium & then we started focusing in more & more & trying to realize the vision that we had when Tom & me got together for the first time in 2001 & talked about how this should be pursued.

MH: Did you find this to be harder to record than past albums?

MEA: There was never an easy Celtic Frost album to record. I might say that Morbid Tales was probably the easiest one, but I think it has to do with the fact that in the same year we had already recorded Apocalyptic Raids by Hellhammer (&) dissolved the band & formed Celtic Frost & we only had 5 days to record & mix everything with Morbid Tales. We didn’t even have time to get nervous cause this was like a 24/7 kind of thing. But this time around there was a lot of pressure, a lot of tension, but also having to do with the fact that I think this is the most intimate, most personal Celtic Frost album of them all. I think a lot of the tension in the recording process had to do with the fact that this was really emotional a lot of times so nerves were being bared & this can be kind of hurtful from time to time.

MH: How different is the end result to what you initially envisioned it coming out as?

MEA: I think it is darker than we would have expected when we started, much bleaker I guess. It’s difficult when you envision a record after a 10-year hiatus, from ’91 when we had the last live shows to 2001 when we started the creative process on the new record. You have an idea or a vision & it’s difficult to say how that will flesh out. It’s like if you’re a sculpture-ist & you’ve got a block of stone in front of you & you have the idea of what the finished piece will look like but what you see in front of you is this block of stone so you have to chisel away. In the process you have to work with the stone & discover that some things might not work the way you want to, but you try to be true to your original vision. On the other hand you could describe it the way if you look at a mountain on a map. This is the mountain. This is where we will go up. This area is steep & then we go around there, but if you really try to climb the mountain, if you wanna make it to the top it’s a completely different ballgame. This is the kind of feeling we had in the process of making this album. From vision to fully fleshed out work.

MH: Did the band ever worry about drawing the line at changing too much at times?

MEA: I guess we didn’t. Who would dare to, within 4 years, develop as a band from Hellhammer Apocalyptic Raids in ’84, to Celtic Frost Cold Lake in ’88? Do you have any other band in mind that did the same kind of thing? So I guess we did not draw a line. From the beginning with Hellhammer that, with two demo tapes & one measly mini album became an absolute supposably cult item & highly influential on everything that came out after in the regard of black metal, to Cold Lake. That was sheer commercial suicide. How many bands come to mind that were doing the same ridiculously crazy fast development from album to album? None. So I guess, no we did not draw a line and we didn’t draw a line this time around. We only approached it much more mature. We had time on our side in the regard that we had a lot of time that had passed between the original first run of Celtic Frost & this 2nd approach. We had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking (about) what Celtic Frost meant to us & how things happen & how it worked. We took our time this time around. As I mentioned, from Apocalyptic Raids to Cold Lake was 4 years and exactly the period that we took to work on Monotheist was four years. We wrote music for about 3 albums and we threw away 2 albums worth of material. Some of that stuff, if you were to hear it right now you wouldn’t know it is Celtic Frost. We were experimenting this time around as well but we said we’re gonna take time & we wanna focus cause this is what we started losing with Into The Pandemonium. Cause we were also in the record industry cycle, like album-tour-album-tour & always with the pressure from the company (saying) you need to go out & record a new album. We need to have this out in 3 months or something. So we said no, no way. We wanna do it on our own terms, we’re gonna take our time, but we didn’t draw a line.

MH: How do you feel about the influence you’ve had?

MEA: I’m amazed at how many different sub-genres we were influential on. I just read an article in the British magazine Terrorizer that had this doom special & they mentioned all those late 80’s doom bands, especially the British doom scene. You had bands like Anathema, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and each & every one of those bands, including Cathedral stated Celtic Frost as an influence. So we were influential on the doom metal scene as well. The same goes for the death metal scene. We called ourselves death metal, but if you listen to Nile or Krisiun these days you might hardly say that Celtic Frost in ’86 was what you would consider death metal nowadays. Although listening to Nile I can hear Celtic Frost elements in there. I know where that comes from. In that regard I think it is crazy. We would have never dared to think that something like this could be possible. We didn’t even consider it cause we were so focused on our work. It was really hard to bring it across cause there was a lot of objection from the record company, from the press, as well as from the fans. When Into The Pandemonium came out we had shocked reactions by some people that expected it to be To Mega Therion part 2. So in hindsight I think it is one of the reasons we can be called lucky to have this chance to come around after 15 years, record an album & get this much interest. On one side we’re really thankful for it. On the other side what should we do with it? Cause it’s what people make with us. We just did what we did and what people are making with us is their thing. There are a lot of bands that I respect, a lot of bands that I think are better musicians or better songwriters than us and definitely do their own thing. If we have been inspirational to them to do just that I think that is a nice compliment.

MH: On the early stuff, it wasn’t perfect, but it had attitude & atmosphere. How important do you think it is to maintain those elements?