Truly a classic album. Really original sound with Tom’s buzzsaw guitar tone and signature chord progressions. The BLACK SOUND! Good call! The use of horns in the dramatic intro and in other parts I believe were to give it a Wagnerian sound and thus it has a very European sound. Tom’s English also gives it that Euro feel with his amusing mispronunciations and, to my ears, often indecipherable grunt-singing.

My favorite Metal album of the 80's.

Yea I just recently got into this album after hearing about it for decades … read where these guys were really into Bauhaus and Joy Division.. bands that listen to music outside their genre usually sound more original

I'm a huge fan of the album. CF is a big influence on Obituary. I'd say this is the biggest influence on Black Metal with the first Bathory album, more than Venom. The follow up is my favorite Celtic Frost album.

That intro story reminds me of my quest for Hawkwind's Space Ritual in very good condition. I bought it three times. Once for disc one, once for disc two, and once for the foldout cover, and didn't break 20 bucks for all three. Very satisfying.

I love this album. I bought it on cassette on a whim based on that dark, scary, sacrilegious cover art. My buddy and I went from the record store over to JC Penney and put it into one of the stereo systems LOL - that intro was so huge and different sounding from anything I'd heard on a metal album at that point...and then here comes "Usurper" and it was just unrelentingly brutal...at that point maybe the heaviest most extreme thing I'd heard. Honestly I felt instant regret spending the money on it. BUT as things were at that point in time - there was no internet so it was radio or cassettes and LPs...Having only x amount of tapes I figured to give this one more spins. How it grew on me began with Tom's "Heeeyyy!" or "Ugh!" grunts - they were hilarious and so we'd spin it because it entertained us in that way. No one sounded like Tom G. Warrior - so over the top and unintelligible - even with a lyric sheet (BTW not included in the cassette) he was hard to follow. And then the riffs and mood started gripping as I acclimated to this thrash/doom mix...the catchiness of the songs even as heavy as they were. "Usurper" was my go to but over time I grew to love the album for what it was and appreciate it's bravery to not be the best musicians but embrace unusual, avant-garde ideas and bring them into metal. For sure sub-genres such as black metal (not only musically but visually), death metal, doom-death like Dream Death - Paradise Lost - My Dying Bride, ...all owe a heavy debt to Celtic Frost's catalog pre-Cold Lake. One of the most important albums and bands in metal history. Not a band that was ever going to cross over gold record sales like the Big 4 BUT arguably damn near almost as important to the development and growth of metal.

This record is a Masterpiece! Love the cover!!!

To Mega Therion with Celtic Frost is a really great album.

Totally agree. Fantastic albumin all aspects, artwork, classical elements, production, pacing, mood and atmosphere. It gives off a bit of Lovecraftian vibes too, I reckon, even if less so than Morbid Tales and Emperor's Return. It's my favourite album by them and I would rank it amongst the best dark albums regardless of genre. Also, it took me a long time to understand the high praise of the band beyond influence, on a purely musical level.

🤘🏻💀 still have my copy from when it came out!

John, you didn’t mention Fainted Eyes or Eternal Summer?

Fantastic record all around. Hard to think of a record that had that kind of cover art back then. I'm more of a Morbid Tales guy, but To Mega Therion ain't far behind. It has what might be their most underrated (and angriest) song, Eternal Summer.

One of the most raw and brutal metal records ever made.

I got this on LP. I haven't sat down and compared them, but I'm told the CD release has different versions of some of the songs. I used to have the Hellhammer ep too. Too bad I traded that in.

The album is great, the guitar tone is definitely crushing on this one. You mention Victor Griffin of Pentagram, and i hear this tone on the first Saint Vitus album as well. In a different genre the Swedish hardcore punk band CrudeSS had a very similar tone as early as 1982 (even before the Hellhammer demos!). I still prefer Morbid Tales / Emperor's return to "To megatherion", the gothic elements are really becoming prominent already and would take over on the follow-up "Into the pandemonium".

Great album not a fan of the 2 followups, but Vanity/Nemisis was a welcome return to form imo.

Great dark album, scary cover and don't forget the vocal style: so brutal and unpolished. Hellhammer was even more extreme, they wanted to clone Venom. Tom Warrior is one of my heroes!

Classic.

Celtic Frost or Bathory? I choose Celtic Frost. Very unique band in metal history.

Is that cover an HR Giger rip off? Or legit?