Canon in Miniature #186

Celtic Frost Tragic Serenades

1986; Noise

Tragic Serenades should be the epitome of worthless releases. Merely a year after the release of To Mega Therion here’s an EP with three re-recordings – one from Morbid Tales and two from TMT – with nothing explicitly new to offer. That’s all kinds of red flags right there, the sign of a band that knows it needs to release something to keep themselves in their fans’ mind while they cook up a second album but doesn’t have much in reserve to make that release worthwhile. So why not cobble together some alternate versions of songs that are already released? The thought behind the release of Tragic Serenades is transparent to a fault, and yet in the end I can’t manage to summon up much vitriol towards it. The thing is, I like it when bands re-visit their material, especially when they don’t just provide a straight retread of the original with minimal differences. I may question the timing of its release, but the results are far more worthwhile than that would intimate.

It certainly helps that it’s two of To Mega Therion’s best tracks that receive the re-recorded treatment here. It’s been a while since I gave the album a spin but I remember that “Jewel Throne” at least was one of my favorite tracks there, and “The Usurper” has that off-kilter riff – you know, the one that whose emphasis seems purposely shifted a sixteenth note off time – in its favor. The major factor though is that he versions presented here are just different enough to feel necessary without being thorough re-imaginings that would negate their source’s influence too greatly. The differences are mostly stylistic, not structural; the band is playing more loosely within the frameworks established by either track but they’re not altering the structure in the process. It’s a fine line to walk, and Celtic Frost does it remarkably well here, making the songs flow more naturally and loosely without removing the aspects of the originals that made them work. I should also note that the biggest change here, the re-recorded bass tracks, put points in favor of these versions even when you remove the looseness of playing from the equation. Hell I might even say that I prefer these to the To Mega Therion versions if pressed to make a choice

The revision of “Return to the Eve” falls short of the standard set by the preceding cuts, but that has more to do with the fact that it’s not really that good of a song than any specific issues I might have with the re-recording presented here. This version – subtitled ‘Party Mix’ because it’s clear that this was a lark on the band’s part more than anything; hell you can even heat Tom Warrior crack up a bit as he’s singing – does benefit from having Reed St. Mark’s drumming if nothing else, and it certainly carries over the looseness and naturalistic style of playing established on the rest of the EP. Really, the fact that the band themselves seem to be having a ball with this recording session adds more enjoyment than the slight improvements to the songs themselves. Tragic Serenades may not be an essential piece of the CF discography, but it’s certainly nowhere near as disposable as it might appear to be at first glance. Honestly, I was ready to pre-emptively write it off on the basis of its tracklist at first, but a few listens demonstrated that a few slight revisions on familiar material can result in just as much enjoyment as a similar amount of new stuff. Hell, given where CF themselves were headed after this it’s almost surely preferable. [6.6]