This interview was with Martin Eric Ain, founder and bassist of Celtic Frost. Unfortunately, the recording of this interview was botched tremendously, hence I was forced to write most of it from memory. Mr. Ain will hopefully correct anything he feels inaccurate.

After the success of Celtic Frost’s first incarnation as Hellhammer, they went to the record company and told them they’re disbanding and forming a new band – Celtic Frost. The record company thought was an extremely stupid thing to do because they’d just released an album and were just getting somewhere. But they took the risk.

This band has a much stronger tie to its cover art than most and the bond between the music and artwork was twofold. when they first formed Celtic Frost they knew what the artwork would be for the first three albums. On one hand they looked for their artwork because it reflected what the band was putting across in its music. On the other hand they were enthusiastic fans of HR Giger (they’d received the rights to use his artwork before Celtic Frost was even founded) and their music was definitely influenced by his work. The Bosch detail (they were initially going to use another detail) they used on their followup release “To Mega Therion” was because after using HR Giger’s art they needed something that wouldn’t be of lesser emotional magnitude than what they were portraying in their music.

Ain is Swiss German. He lives in Zurich. I told him it was beautiful and he got very excited when I said I’d went to the H.R. Giger museum. The one in Guyeres? No, the one in the Cabaret Voltaire. He said that Walt Disney would have wanted to make a replica of this town because it’s a quaint little village that hasn’t been changed for hundreds of years and that the Giger museum is two of these old houses joined together.

He likes it when a band takes their influence and they don’t hear the influence in the band – he’s enthused about Dark Fortress.

He asked me what I think the best band of all time is – Iron Maiden. He admires Steve Harris and says that what he’s done with Iron Maiden and keeping that band together for as long as they have and doing what they do is very admirable.

Celtic Frost has a very powerful dynamic about them because they were one of if not the first band to experiment back in the 80’s when such things just were not done in the metal field.

At first they were completely maligned by Kerrang, then considered to be the be-all end-all metal bible of the scene.

When the first Celtic Frost album came out they only got one K. Three years later Kerrang retracted their lousy review and Celtic Frost got five K’s on the second album.

Ain was influenced by Cliff Burton – he said when he was playing and thought he was one of the best there was, then he heard Cliff Burton and realized that he had a lot of work to do.

As for their record label, they’re not taking any submissions now because they financed the entire operation themselves down to the very last detail so if it doesn’t work out he’s going to go back to washing dishes (well, he could always teach bass).

Celtic Frost is in the process of making themselves an entity (meaning not just the band, but encompassing every business aspect of their band as well) and they wanted the complete freedom to make the album that would truly symbolize what Celtic Frost is now.

I asked why they were termed “the elder statesmen of innovative metal”.

“Well, to be honest I think it was just something that we did because we were just experimenting on some level.”

What they basically did was infuse their music with their spirit.

Regarding Cold Lake, Ain thinks the album they did before Cold Lake was just barely going over the edge and that was why it was still successful but they also could take it a bit too far.

He appreciates technical ability but it’s more important that the music portray sheer emotion than if they can play technically superbly.

So I asked him something about why he thinks that nothing matters.

“Look,” he asked me. “Do you know any musicians from thousands of years ago?”

“Well yeh, King David.”

He then said something about how people make themselves a past in order to give themselves meaning or something like that – and that everything is futile.

I answered, “But look at Cliff Burton, Randy Rhoads, Jimi Hendrix. People are still looking up to them and kids will be listening and learning from them from years to come.”

“But you think Jimi Hendrix cares? He’s dead!”

The main focus of Celtic Frost is on death. Nihil Verum Nisi Mors is their longtime motto – Only Death Is Final.

I said, “Well, it keeps you humble” and he said, “No, we can really be arrogant, arrogant assholes.”

He was actually quite gracious considering the fact that I knew not a whit about this band when I did the interview except that they were very influential.

When asked about the trend of female singers in metal, Ain’s application of female vocals is in order to establish tension. On the new album they use three different female vocalists in different styles: one a soprano whose voice is fighting with the guitar, one is singing in contrast with an all-male choir and oneprovides sings in harmony/duet with the male vocalist.

And that’s all I remember.