Celtic Frost - "Cold Lake", 1988

There was a time when record shop owners would take the liberty to give the customers suggestions on what to buy or to avoid; as a teenager in the early 90s, I was browsing through the secondhand vinyl section of a small metal shop in my city, and at some point I picked up "Cold Lake", thinking the cover looked pretty classy. At that point I had heard about Celtic Frost but actually never had the chance to listen to the band yet; before I could even take a look at the back cover, which would've revealed the atrocious glammed up band picture, a voice coming from behind the counter went "NOPE!" The shop owner then literally reached the vinyl section to remove "Cold Lake" from my hands, swapping it with a copy of "Into the Pandemonium" and proclaiming, "Here you go". "Into the Pandemonium" became one of my favorite albums ever, and I discovered the other Frost records shortly afterwards, but it took me some more years to finally cave in and give "Cold Lake" a chance; at that point I was prepared for the worst, but it wasn't as bad as I expected, while moderately disturbing.

This said, "Cold Lake" isn't a great album by any means. Apparently, back then Tom Warrior was spending most of his time in the US with his new American girlfriend (and later wife), starting to finally enjoy life, and probably got sucked into the optimism and party-hard, lighthearted attitude of the era; it's hard to fathom what passed through his mind when he decided to bring back Celtic Frost as a very different entity, seemingly trying to fit in with the Sunset Strip image that was popular in those days. Calling back Stephen Priestly from the Hellhammer and "Morbid Tales" days, bass player Curt Victor Bryant and young lead guitarist Oliver Amberg, Warrior set out to conquer the US market with the new Frost, but the outcome was predictably disappointing.

It's easy to see why; Celtic Frost wasn't an American band, they weren't particularly good-looking, and the music on "Cold Lake" lacked any commercial appeal, besides not necessarily falling under the glam/arena rock tag that was popular at the time. Even the more successful bands in the genre were losing ground after "Appetite for Destruction" by Guns N' Roses came out in 1987, bringing back some grit into a scene that was getting increasingly lost in a whirlwind of lipstick and hairspray; an album like "Cold Lake", instead, could be paired with the third-rate sleaze bands that were still popping out left and right from every corner of America and, to a lesser extent, the UK. The songwriting and musicianship on it couldn't compete with the top players in the genre, and despite the production by Tony Platt - one of the best engineers around in the 80s - it sounded like it was recorded in a basement; it was drenched in the typical reverb of the era, and the drums were mostly overpowering the mushy-sounding guitars. Amberg was a sloppy player and couldn't hold a candle to guitar heroes such as Warren DeMartini or George Lynch, Tom's vocals were a punkish, clumsy moan that barely followed the melody of the songs, and the overall style of the record was often more akin to classic metal or a lite version of the original Celtic Frost sound.

Still, if one accepts that this is not the real Celtic Frost and ignores the embarrassing lyrics and technical shortcomings, it's one of those records that can be strangely entertaining, especially if you're a fan of lesser-known glam and classic metal acts of the 80s. The A side is sensibly better than the B side, with a few exceptions, namely "Downtown Hanoi" - the only song on the album that vaguely resembles the original Frost - and the pretty solid "Roses Without Thorns"; most of the other stuff is forgettable, cheap sleaze, especially "Little Velvet". The first half of the record, while having nothing to do with how the band used to sound, except for some random "huh!" by Warrior, features a bunch of enjoyable songs, with "Petty Obsession" and "(Once) They Were Eagles" offering some captivating heavy metal riffs and a few memorable choruses.

"Cold Lake" is an oddity that comes off as shocking if you think the band released an avantgarde, forward-thinking masterpiece such as "Into the Pandemonium" just the year before; it sounds dated and tired in comparison, and it would have been mediocre even if released under a different moniker. It can be considered some sort of guilty pleasure by some though, if taken light-heartedly, still it obviously sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the band's discography.