by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Bands sometimes come to that point in their career when they release the Shark Sandwich (or “shit sandwich,” fans of This Is Spinal Tap will recall) of their discography. Remember Bad Religion’s horrifically Journey-fuelled Into the Unknown? Probably not, because Bad Religion wisely never put it back in print, insuring that it’ll always languish in the unknown. Even the Clash’s Cut the Crap seriously threatened to mar the band’s near-perfect recorded legacy.

The elder statesmen of innovative metal, Celtic Frost released their own shit sandwich in 1988, the stinker Cold Lake. Featuring such heinous hair-metal rockers as “Seduce Me Tonight,” “Tease Me” and “Dance Sleazy,” the band announced quite loudly that they were indeed creatively bankrupt and horribly off track. Although the follow-up, Vanity/Nemesis, did make apologies, it failed to make a mark on a metal community that was just beginning to feel the tremors of a new sound coming out of Seattle in the early ’90s.

Fifteen years since hanging up their spandex and mascara, Celtic Frost are back with a vengeance, completely surprising everyone by releasing their most dark and personal record to date, Monotheist, which could easily go toe to toe with their 1985 masterwork To Mega Therion. Despite some greying at the temples, Celtic Frost continue to innovate and re-invent the metal genre, while also managing to retain their classic sound.

“That record is an abomination,” says guitarist/singer Thomas Gabriel Fischer (who has ditched his longstanding Warrior surname) of Cold Lake. “I think that record was hugely devastating to our legacy. We were just burnt out musically and personally at that point. That incarnation that bore the name Celtic Frost had nothing to do with what Martin [Ain, bassist] and I had created. After 14 months of legal battles with the record company, I was completely burnt out when we went in to do that record. It was a mistake to continue, but I just didn’t have anything else in my life at that time.”

After Ain—his childhood friend and collaborator since the pre-Celtic Frost band Hellhammer—left the band due to record-label legal problems, Fischer gave up the fight and began leaning towards industrial and electronic sounds.

In 2000, the band’s early work was remastered and re-released for a new metal crowd just discovering these original metal extremists (except for Cold Lake, thankfully). With their legal problems finally out of the way, Ain and Fischer were eager to revitalize the Celtic Frost name, financing their recordings themselves and taking five years to create what would become Monotheist.

“We wrote enough material for three records, but if it didn’t feel like Celtic Frost, in the end we would throw it out. I am not trying to trick people and think that I am a young man, because I’m not, I’m in my 40s, but I feel much stronger and more in touch with my reality now. I don’t want to rehash my golden youth and I think I am far more interested in what I am doing now. I’m actually far more radical now than I was when I started the band. We have learned a lot and have really come up with a record that was meant to please us first. I am just as interested to see how far Celtic Frost can go now as I was when we started the band. Y’know, I’m not dead yet.”

With 1349 and Sahg at le Medley on Saturday, Sept. 16, 8 p.m., $40.37

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