Review by Morpheus Kitami for Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion (1985)

I don't understand how Warrior, having been good friends with the late great H.R. Giger, somehow managed to get his worst painting as the interior and second worst as the exterior. He'd have been better off with that weird cat drawing. It's just so goofy, as Giger's artwork doesn't work here outside of pure shock value, of which there is none in 2023. It's like saying you're pro-Napoleon, nobody cares.
To Mega Therion is a very weird album, unique in sound and spirit. For instance, The Usurper is on a surface level just a fairly typical proto-black metal song. Yet, beyond that surface it's structured like a new wave song, has a triumphant feeling that black metal rarely captures. Yet, despite nominally being thrash, it feels unlike any real thrash song it's hard to believe it's part of the genre.
Now of course there are the straightforward bits. That aggressive, even in the slow bits, guitar creating the kind of atmosphere that would be every black metallers dream. Despite an arguable lack of talent, Smoothly gliding to where it needs to be, only stopping when a stop is absolutely needed. Even solos that should rightly be absolutely terrible, work. Beyond the North Winds is basically the bare minimum of what a solo is, yet works incredibly in the context of the song.
Vocalist Tom G. Warrior is also something that shouldn't work, because he has a voice that brings to mind Sylvester Stallone; a voice that could never be confused for something harmonious and lovely. The mystical lyrics that are pretty interesting just come out as gibberish, sometimes even falsetto gibberish. Still, as that comparison implies, there's a charm to him, and his little grunts he does. Something so distinct that it only works for him, and everyone else using it is so obviously imitating him as to be hard to take seriously.
It's mind-boggling that an album that seems to be so completely amateurish and devoid of any qualities that should be positive is as good as it is. Yet, I and many others think of this very fondly, and sometimes it even transcends it's niche as one of the first black metal albums.