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.