METAL ARCHIVIST & OLD SCHOOL METAL HEAD … OBSESSED WITH HEAVY * THRASH * DEATH * BLACK * DOOM * HARD ROCK *
Friday, October 31, 2025
CELTIC FROST ”TO MEGA THERION” PHOTO SESSION
Shortly before driving to what was then West Berlin to enter Casablanca Recording Studio and commence the To Mega Therion recording sessions, Celtic Frost gathered at photographer Ernst Wirz's photo studio on Forchstrasse in Zurich, Switzerland, to conduct the photo session that was to yield the images that would appear on the album.
Wirz, an accomplished Jazz musician in his own right, was a fashion photographer and part of Reed's circle of friends. His To Mega Therion photo session was easily the most ambitious the band had ever undertaken.
The photos posted here are previously unreleased outtakes from the hundreds of negatives of this photo session. They show the band with short-time bassist Dominic Steiner, who was with Celtic Frost for the duration of the album recording sessions.
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SATYRICON ”MOTHER EARTH” [MUSIC VIDEO] UNCENSORED & CENSORED VERSION
Released on VHS in 1996 by Moonfog Productions. It was shot on location in Hekseskogen, Torsskogen & Greåker Fort, March 1996. It contains two different clips of "Mother North" (one of them uncut).
UNCENSORED
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CENSORED
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COMPARING BOTH VERSIONS
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KORROZIA METALLA (КОРРОЗИЯ МЕТАЛЛА) "КАННИБАЛ ТУР 1990-1991” [VHS]
Released on VHS in 1996, but recording during 1990-1991. It was later released on DVD as well.
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AMAZING INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN ERIC AIN (2006)
Embeded is an awesome Martin Eric Ain (Hellhammer/Celtic Frost) interview from Tom G. Warriors website.
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Thursday, October 30, 2025
KISS AT THE TOM SNYDER SHOW (1979) ACE FREHLEY’S BEST INTERVIEW
On October 31, 1979 Kiss was on the Tom Snyder Show, an appearance that would become the most legendary of all their interviews. Mainly because Ace is drunk as f**k and Gene and Paul are visibly pissed off at him.
Kiss's appearance on The Tomorrow Show was timed for Halloween, for obvious reasons. Snyder was providing the four members — Ace, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — a chance to discuss their rise and worldwide success. But while Simmons and Stanley were keen to follow the script, it was clear almost from the beginning that Ace was going off the rails, making wisecracks and telling jokes, often at the band's expense.
“I was nervous as hell,” he explains. “I think I drank half a pint of vodka, and then I did some blow to wake up.”
That sounds like a lot of drugs, but for Frehley it was business as usual. “Yeah… it was crazy,” he shrugs. “But I was crazy back then. Anything went when I was in my 20s. I mean… everybody was doing that shit.”
“Paul and Gene would try to compete with me but always fail,” he says. “If you look at the old interviews, even when I was loaded and buzzed, once I got into the groove, you couldn’t top me. Gene would try and throw a line in there. I remember Gene tried to tell a joke to Tom Snyder, but he got completely ignored.”
With Frehley doing everything from drunkenly howling to playing with teddy bears and making a lewd joke about being a plumber, one can understand why Snyder fixated on him.
“The plumber thing came completely out of the blue,” he says. “I didn’t plan that; it’s just a line that I came up with. Why this shit flies into my head… I have no idea. It’s probably all the substances I was doing.”
He laughs, but he’s serious. Funny as Frehley’s antics were, it was apparent that Simmons and Stanley weren’t pleased with their lead guitarist's behavior. “Kiss had a weird chemistry back then,” Frehley says. “We had a weird dynamic, which is one of the reasons that group worked.”
Still, Frehley asserts that Kiss thrived on that sort of push/pull. “The four of us were different,” he explains. “Somehow, someway, we got together. That energy… sometimes we’d argue, but when we got together, most of the time, it worked.”
What’s more, Frehley offers a counterpoint to the long-running theory that Simmons and Stanley were furious over his behavior on Snyder's program. “I watched it about six months ago,” he says. “I noticed that toward the end of the video, Paul and Gene were put off by me going off on crazy tangents, but at the end they started joining in with my insanity.”
“It might have been because they couldn’t win,” he adds, with a laugh. “Tom was in love with me. He was so surprised that I was such a maniac and a funny guy. The only way for Gene and Paul to win was to be as zany and nutty as I was; it helped. But earlier in the interview, yeah… they were resistant. It looked awkward.”
PLAYING RIGHT NOW … MALIGN ”DIVINE FACING/FIREBORN” [COMPILATION]
Genre: Black Metal
Year: 1998/2002
Country: Sweden
Note: Two of my all time favorite Black Metal EP’s collected on to one vinyl, what could be better. This is nothing short of perfection. Nord is also on my top 5 Black Metal vocalist list.
Year: 1998/2002
Country: Sweden
Note: Two of my all time favorite Black Metal EP’s collected on to one vinyl, what could be better. This is nothing short of perfection. Nord is also on my top 5 Black Metal vocalist list.
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WHITESNAKE ”CITY HALL, NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND” (OCTOBER 26, 1978) [AUDIO+TICKET+EYE WITNESS]
David Coverdale embarked on a solo career in 1977 after the split of Deep Purple. His first solo album “White Snake” was released in February 1977. All the songs were written by David Coverdale and Micky Moody, who was also guitarist in David’s band. The album wasn’t particularly successful, but its title inspired the name of Coverdale’s future band, which was to come together one year later. In early 1978 Coverdale released his second solo album “Northwinds”. The band which was to be Whitesnake was already coming together. In June 1978 the “Snakebite” EP was released, which contained the Whitesnake favourite, their cover of Bobby Bland’s “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City”.
Coverdale: “Originally I had no plans to actually record ‘Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City’… if you can believe it…a song that connects so deeply with so many that I still play it today, 25 years later.”
AUDIO:
Audience recording
Audience recording
TICKETS:
SETLIST:
00:00 Come On
04:44 Might Just Take Your Life
10:58 Lie Down
15:30 Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City
22:29 Trouble
28:00 Micky Moody Solo
31:06 Steal Away
35:50 Mistreated
48:25 Belgian Tom's Hat Trick
55:14 Jon Lord Solo
59:55 Take Me With You
1:08:20 Rock Me Baby
1:16:54 Breakdown / Whitesnake
LINE-UP:
David Coverdale (Vocals)
Neil Murray (Bass)
Micky Moody (Guitar)
David Dowle (Drums)
Jon Lord (Keyboard)
Bernie Marsden (Guitar)
SUPPORT ACT:
Magnum
EYE WITNESS:
Courtesy of Vintagerock’s Weblog: I first saw Whitesnake at Newcastle City Hall in October 1978. They had just released the “Trouble” album, and this was the first night of their first major tour of UK concert halls. The line-up was David Coverdale (vocals), Micky Moody (guitar), Bernie Marsden (guitar), Neil Murray (bass), Jon Lord (keyboards) and Dave Dowle (drums). Jon Lord had just joined. From the program: “David Coverdale and Whitesnake – two names that have imprinted themselves on the British Rock media and the public in the last nine months….David Coverdale and Whitesnake left audiences and industry aware that a brilliant, yet deeply experienced new force had arrived on the rock scene.”
Whitesnake were heavy but soulful. Much more bluesy than Purple, but also heavier. Coverdale had an incredible voice; one minute he could be singing the most soulful gentle blues, and then he would thrust his head back, that mane of hair would sway behind him, and he would bellow and scream some of the rockiest songs to be heard on a concert stage anywhere. And with Jon Lord in the band, you knew that they had to play some Purple songs. Their versions of “Might Just Take Your Life” and “Mistreated” were pure class. “Mistreated” in particular was a tour de force for Whitesnake; particularly because of Coverdale’s amazing vocal performances of the song. But Whitesnake wasn’t just the David Coverdale show; this was a strong rock band with two excellent guitarists who both understood, and could play, the blues, and in Jon Lord the greatest exponent of the Hammond organ.
Phil Sutcliffe, reveiwing the concert is Sounds (11 November 1978): ‘Mistreated’: the most astonishing first line I’ve ever heard is Coverdale gathering into that bellow of “I’ve been Mistreated”: the sort of passion that whitesnakeredcarmitch78enabled Samson to pull down the Philistine temple; the song is magnificent and raw, an insight like an old roaster’s painting of a butcher’s shop, life as red meat; at the end Coverdale throws his head back and howls like a wolf and we roar at him; “You like the blues? Of course you f***ing do – all northerners like the blues and don’t we know it”. Whitesnake were incredible that night, and the Newcastle heavy rock brigade now had a new band to worship alongside Rainbow and Gillan.
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Wednesday, October 29, 2025
GONE … NEVER FORGOTTEN: MARTIN ERIC AIN (18 JULY, 1967 - 21 OCTOBER 2017)
Personally apart from being a Hellhammer/Celtic Frost fan, I had the pleasure of hosting a signing session with Celtic Frost in April 3, 2007, before their show at Fryshuset, Stockholm, Sweden together with Kreator and Watain. They came to my shop early and I had a long interesting conversation with mainly Martin, since he found the stores bookshelf's with occult literature, and he ended picking out two big bags with books for over $1000. One of the nicest ”stars” I ever meet. R.I.P.
Martin Eric Ain (born Martin Erich Stricker; July 18, 1967 – October 21, 2017) was a Swiss musician of American origin best known as the bassist of Hellhammer and Celtic Frost. He used the stage name Martin Eric Ain throughout. Ain was born in the United States and spoke English as a first language.
In May 1984, Hellhammer dissolved, but two of its members, guitarist/vocalist Thomas Gabriel Fischer and bassist Martin Eric Ain, went on to form Celtic Frost in June and release their debut, Morbid Tales, in November of that same year. This was followed by Emperor's Return ,To Mega Therion in 1985, arguably their most influential record, which did not feature Ain on bass, but stand-in musician Dominic Steiner. Ain returned after the album was recorded. In 1987, the band released the highly experimental Into the Pandemonium.
After a subsequent North American tour, financial trouble, personal tension between the band members and an ill-fated relationship with their record label led to the dissolution of the band. Six months later, Thomas Gabriel Fischer reformed the band with a new line-up, of which Ain was left out, and went on to record the widely derided Cold Lake in 1988. Ain returned once again for the recording of Vanity/Nemesis in 1990, the band's last original album for several years.
Celtic Frost re-formed in 2001 and released the critically acclaimed Monotheist in 2006, before ultimately disbanding following frontman Tom Gabriel Fischer's departure in 2008.
Ain died on October 21, 2017, following a heart attack.
EULOGY
(by Tom G. Warrior)
Some days after Martin Eric Ain's death on 21 October 2017, his girlfriend Steffi Neuhauser asked me to be one of the speakers during the memorial celebration on the day of his funeral. The celebration was held at the main club Martin managed with his partners in Zurich, Switzerland, on 31 October 2017. Each of the handful of speakers, among them Martin's brother Thomas Stricker, was assigned a period of Martin's life to talk about. I was asked to reminisce about Martin's youth and how we came to create music together.
This is a translation of my speech on that day:
The last time I stood here, it was with Celtic Frost, Martin by my side.
To talk about Martin here today is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do; playing on Wacken's main stage is a piece of cake in comparison. It's difficult because my feelings about Martin are of an very personal nature, and because ours was a relationship of many layers, as you all know. But Steffi asked me to address the time when Martin and I first met, and I do not wish to disappoint either her or Martin.
And anyone who knew Martin also knows that were he in my place right now, he would be talking for three hours without interruption.
Martin and I met in 1983 at what was called a "heavy metal disco" in Wallisellen, the village in which he lived. It wasn't actually a metal event, but rather a regular disco held in the parish hall of the local reformed church—a fitting location—where some heavy metal would be played out of sheer pity for the few crazy, leather-clad teenage metal heads that would arrive from the surrounding villages.
Hellhammer had already been around for over a year at that point, and the band members usually went to such events as a clique. As we entered, Martin and his friends immediately caught our attention, and we caught theirs. All of us had found our own unique way of projecting an extreme but also wounded aura. It did not take long for us in Hellhammer to develop a deep, unique connection with Martin and his friends, and we soon began to spend much time together. Martin was 15 at the time, and I was 19.
Martin and his friends began to regularly attend Hellhammer's rehearsals in a bunker in Birchwil, two villages away. They would come by bicycle, over steep hills, in the heat of summer, on the coldest days of winter, and at night, through the pitch-dark forests. They were fanatics, and together we became a new, larger group of like-minded friends.
Martin soon became an important and extraordinary friend to me. We spent days and especially nights endlessly discussing all kinds of topics, from music to occultism to history to our shared love for H.R. Giger's work. Hellhammer's existence inspired Martin to form a band of his own, "Schizo". At first, they owned literally no equipment, so we in Hellhammer lent them our instruments and rehearsal space. They started out playing cover versions, such as Anvil's Metal On Metal.
In autumn of 1983, Hellhammer needed a new bassist, and both Hellhammer and Martin naturally considered that he might take on this role. But he did not have the confidence to join, in spite of the fact that we talked about it constantly for months. Instead, Martin began to support Hellhammer behind the scenes by submitting quite sophisticated ideas on how Hellhammer could improve image, lyrics, and everything else.
He did not only convey these ideas to us in conversations, he also handed us detailed memos signed "Mart Jeckyl", derived from the two personalities Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. It was absolutely brilliant.
In late 1983, Martin finally joined Hellhammer for about two weeks, but he was plagued by thoughts of not being good enough yet. So one day he came to the rehearsal room and told us: "As a member of Hellhammer, I feel that I, the bassist, am only holding back the band. So I am kicking myself out for the benefit of the band!" And that's exactly what he did.
That was typical Martin. He was truly unique character; all of us here know this.
When Hellhammer recorded the band's third and final demo, Satanic Rites, in a studio in Ramsen in December of 1983, Martin again assisted us in an advisory role. But it was during these sessions when it finally became clear to everyone involved that Martin really did belong with Hellhammer. As we left the studio with the new demo, he finally joined the band permanently. We immediately took photos of the new line-up and sent them with the demo to the prospective record company in West Berlin. This resulted in our first international recording contract.
As Martin joined Hellhammer, he was looking for an correspondingly extreme stage name for himself. He suggested Prowling Abortion. We were both unfettered radicals by now, but my enthusiasm for this suggestion was rather restrained. I wondered whether we might ever have an international career with such a stage name and advised him against it.
He then suggested Slayed Necros, and that seemed to me to be a far superior and more ingenious name. So this became his name in Hellhammer. For his so-called "real person" stage name, he replaced his last name "Stricker" with "Ain" and thus became Martin Eric Ain. It would be the name with which he identified for the rest of his life.
Martin always carried a notebook in which he recorded anything interesting he would see or any ideas he would have: sketches, draft texts, song titles such as Nuns And Whores or Masturbation's Good For You. Further such notebooks were part of his existence until his death.
Many such titles and ideas weren't created by coincidence; instead they undoubtedly signified his rebellion against the environment of his youth, and they also served as a tool to distance himself from his deeply religious mother, whom he considered dominant and who always remained formative figure in his life. Martin's preoccupation with the occult and his mother's arch-enemy Satan was his way of revolting. It was a deeply personal act of liberation. At the same time, his work with Hellhammer set the course for the rest of his life.
All of this set in motion a chain of events that would change our lives forever and launch our careers. Our inexperienced teenage years in Swiss farm villages came to an end.
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