When most of the good tunes have already been written, nothing remains but the riff. The riff, purveyed through heavily amplified and distorted electric sound, lies at the heart of extreme metal music’s initial trajectory and of all metal-derived music beyond that, until every last reverberation finally turned to dust. First kings of the pure metal riff were Celtic Frost, and on 1984’s Morbid Tales they unleashed their monstrous sound and vision. Crushing mere rock bands underfoot, Celtic Frost present an occult European death-music to raze cities and strip human flesh from the bone. The future starts here.