The Bishop on Celtic Frost at Manning Bar 13.6.2007

Cultured though the Bishop obviously is, he has been known to dalliance within those slightly louder, slightly darker, slightly less un-asexual realms of rock and roll known as HEAVY METAL now and again. Yet while your musicological man of the cloth did enjoy his teenage ‘metal’ phase, and still retains a love for a select few early exemplars of the style (the present subject of discussion falling well within that category), he is in general largely baffled by the more extreme forms of modern metal—not so much that they exist (artistic experimentation always expanding to fill the available space), but that anybody can be bothered listening to them. What, however, the Bishop finds most baffling is the ability of serious headbangers to identify the line of demarcation between what they call ‘good’ and ‘bad’ black metal: how the latest Decimated Sphincter record—to the Bishop’s ears as musical as hail falling on a mine field—is the gateway to a musical Elysium ne’er dare dreamt of by mortals afore, while the new release by Axabalababathon—equally, as far as the Bishop is concerned, a battle between competing kinds of white noise—is considered rotting sonic vomit not fit to be thrown up after twenty-five lagers and a 3am kebab. Finally, though, the Bishop has acquired some appreciation for this distinction after watching two what could only, in undeserved fairness, be called ‘lesser’ bands take the stage before Celtic Frost.

The first of Chaotic Impurity’s litany of mistakes was to place the drum kit front and centre as the dominant feature of the stage, requiring their goblinoid grunt-vocalist to compete with it for attention. The second mistake was to hire said singer. Half-pixie, half-goat, and with all the presence of a rabbit caught in candle lights, he nonetheless provided the Bishop with some much needed amusement in regards his microphone technique: clenched as tightly as his malnourished fist would allow, held indecisively in front of his mouth as though about to stifle a cough. Noisy without being loud, belligerent without being aggressive, they would have been drowned out by a decent cough, and the sound would certainly have been preferable.

Whoever the second act were, the Bishop sends his thanks for their inoffensive 30-minute set, which allowed him to sit outside in moderate comfort and get ploughed. Having achieved said state of ratarsed-ness, the Bishop made his way inside to take in an hour or so of Celtic Frost, who surprised. Never the tightest of outfits, even on record, your canonical critic was pleased to discover they had, since their creative highpoint in the mid-eighties, been to the musical equivalent of a fine gentlemans tailor. Tailoring, too, seems to have been on the agenda for Tom Fischer nee Warrior, whose sensible overcoat, beanie and black hole starburst eye-paint was one of the more tasteful black metal get-ups the Bishop has encountered. Martin Ain, meanwhile, who looked mostly like a large amount of hair, proved that being middle-aged and fat is no barrier to being copiously metal.

Musically, the Bishop was reminded that simple does not mean simplistic, and that heaviness, like most musical qualities, is not an easy-to-define thing. Many bands since have been larger and louder (well, perhaps not larger than Ain), but few have been nastier or darker. Free of the idiotic double-kick assault that passes for Angry Young Metal these days, the lads just stepped onto stage and filled up the room. And after thoroughly enjoying a set list that included ‘The Usurper’, ‘Circle of the Tyrants’, ‘Procreation of the Wicked’, the misspelled ‘Into the Crypt of Rays’, and the adjectively excessive ‘Necromantical Screams’—as well as some interesting material one assumes to have been off the new record (thus all but leaving out the band’s flabby middle period)—the Bishop can only wonder why other musical ensembles can’t put on something this entertaining for fifty well-spent bucks.