Review by ZeroSymbolic7188 for Celtic Frost - Monotheist (2006)

This is the heaviest album I have ever heard. I've heard a lot of heavy albums. I've heard the most omnious, dysmal, desolate funeral doom. I've heard the most brutal, violent, disgusting death metal. I've heard the most raw, evil, and satanic Black Metal. I've heard grindcore, slam, pornogrind, power violence. I've seen what modern deathcore has to offer. I've heard faster, angrier, more downtuned, more aggressive things than this, but nothing heavier.

I wear a battle vest almost all the time. Including to the high school I work at. I insist on it. When one of the students takes interest and asks me "So Mr. Symbolic, lets cut through all the bullshit, what's the heaviest thing you've heard?" I tell them "The Monotheist Album from Celtic Frost." Without hesitation.  "What does it sound like Mr. Symbolic?"

It sounds like "A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh", and  let's consider how heavy that concept really is. Imagine being a God, a being of unfathomable power, perhaps millenia old. Then something happens that actually kills you, and when you come back from death it's as a weak and pathetic mere mortal, and you feel things like pain, hunger, cold, and fear for the first time. That's the kind of thing we are dealing with here.

It's an hour long with each track building on the prior, it get's increasingly pulverising with each track.

Imagine a small but impenetrable prison, that you are being held captive in. Now imagine that every 5 or ten minutes it's walls reinforce themselves becoming  harder and harder, more and more oppressive. That is what listening to this album feels like. It starts off from the rip in a place that most albums won't even get to, and then it just keeps building on itself. 

Despite this bleak metaphor the album is fun to listen to, but somedays it's just honest to god too much, and I'm a seasoned listener of some pretty intense stuff. For that it deserves your time. Listen to it beginning to end. It's exciting enough that you won't get bored, but you do need the whole hour to fully appreciate how heavy this shit gets. Ask around, I would not say that if it wasnt the absolute truth.