Procreation of the Wicked

Celtic Frost created something genuinely new — a Swiss band emerging from the ashes of Hellhammer, Tom Gabriel Fischer built a sound combining the extremity of early black metal with gothic atmospherics, avant-garde composition, and ambition entirely foreign to the metal mainstream. To Mega Therion (1985) is their most fully realized statement.

Procreation of the Wicked is characteristic Frost at their most stripped-down: a riff that moves like a siege engine, Fischer's guttural vocals, the tempo measured to maximize heaviness rather than velocity. The song is not fast — it doesn't need to be.

Celtic Frost's influence on black metal, death metal, doom, and goth metal is total. Bands from Paradise Lost to Triptykon have been processing their recordings for forty years.