I was invited by editor Heather Quinlan to write a short essay for the ongoing “Mösh Your Enthusiasm” series — topic: “metal records from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema)” — running at hilobrow.com. I wrote about a song by the band Celtic Frost dating from 1987. Read the full piece on the Hilobrow website.
I don’t usually do dedications of this sort, but I added a shout-out at the end of the piece to an old — and long-deceased — friend of mine, Eric Engelhardt, one of my closest friends from high school, who died in 2007, barely into his 40s. I remember wandering around an amusement park in Los Angeles with him toward the end of his life — before his ailments had been discerned — and finding myself at the top of a staircase, looking back down toward him, as he took it one step at a time, pausing now and then. I’d never had more energy than Eric in my entire life until that moment, and I knew then something was wrong. I also know the corner where I was standing in San Francisco when I got the call on my cellphone that he had died, and I find myself still avoiding it. I couldn’t attend Eric’s funeral in New York because there was a terrible rainstorm the night prior and I was stuck at the San Francisco airport, where all flights had been summarily cancelled. Eric had a ferocious affection for metal, and his love for music in general had an enormous impact on me at an age when such impact can set the course of one’s entire life. (Fun fact: Eric, an accomplished puppeteer, built the original Pepe the King Prawn for the Muppets.)
My Celtic Frost tribute is the 15th in the Mösh Your Enthusiasm series at Hilowbrow, so there are another 10 to come. (For the purposes of Disquiet.com’s emphasis on electronic music: the drum machine on “One in Their Pride,” so seemingly out of place on a metal album, was absolutely addictive to me when I first heard it. And still is.) Below are the first two paragraphs:
Much marks the Swiss doom metal band Celtic Frost’s 1987 album, Into the Pandemonium, as strange. The record is a powerful assemblage of rock mysticism, all occult caterwauling, angular solos, battle-ready drums, and arrangement wizardry. It’s the sort of thing that, at proper volume, promises to tap into the very fabric of myth — or at least lend a climactic soundtrack to a weekend Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
And no track on Into the Pandemonium embraces the band’s strangeness quite like its choice of a 12” single, a song that melds Sprechstimme narrative, Greek chorus portent, and louche metal: “I Won’t Dance.” And that’s saying something, since the album opens with a peculiar cover of “Mexican Radio” (Wall of Voodoo’s novel new wave hit from five years prior) and the single also highlighted “One in Their Pride,” which threads Apollo mission vocal samples, a screeching string section, and an admirably stark drum machine beat.
And the song:
And the other song I mention:
Full piece at hilobrow.com.