The Classic Metal Album Review:
Title: Morbid Tales
Artist: Celtic Frost
Label: Engima / Metal Blade Records
Release Date: 1984

Rating: 5 Skulls
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    • Kefka X's Review:
    Are you morbid? No, but I'm hungry.

    Still 20+ years later, Morbid Tales remains a legendary record that has wielded a spawn of classics, clones, and covers as memorable as Tom Warrior's bullet belt and Jason Priestly's overbearing hairstyle. Of course, this isn't without debate. Warrior grunts ala Frankenstein throughout the album's duration and plays some of the most dreadful solos ever (contrasting to other extreme metal juggernauts at the time, Mercyful Fate). The album's drumming is frantic, spastic explosions of tin-can double bass and tinsel-thin cymbal work. Still, there's a nostalgic mystique that underlies each thrashy-punky-blacky track, and if countless covers of "Procreation of the Wicked" and "Into the Crypts of Rays" aren't enough to state otherwise, then I don't know what will. And it's fun to sing along with Tom Warrior's broken, nightmarish English that translates like the Swedish Chef.

    So...despite debates of poor production, less-than-adequate musicianship and a laughable style of clothing and make-up, Morbid Tales will always remain a genre-stomping cataclysm in the history of black metal, although in sound I would place it closer towards the influence of grindcore and death metal.
    5 out of 5

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