Morbid Tales

This is the title track from the Morbid Tales album, written by Tom Warrior and Martin Ain. Despite being the title track, it was only included as an extra song on the US version of the album. When asked about the lyrical inspiration for "Morbid Tales," Martin Ain's answer in the book Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces is that it was inspired by a pulp-fiction short story - whose name he doesn't recall - but he does recall that it was about Nitocrys, an Egyptian empress and sorceress. He seems fairly certain that it was an issue of Weird Tales. Any pulp fans want to do a back-issue hunt? Speaking of the above, both Warrior and Ain cite many literary sources of inspiration for their music and themes. Amongst them are H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Aleister Crowley, and of course religious writings including those related to Kabbalah. References from history, mythology, and fiction pepper Celtic Frost's lyrics.

Relating to Kabbalah, Martin Ain's original name was Martin Eric Stricker. He adopted "Ain" as his stage name through the following line of reasoning given in Precious Metal: Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism that attempts to decipher the true meaning of the Bible through numerology. In the Hebrew alphabet, each letter can be a word in itself, and can also be a number. So the Hebrew letter 'ain,' he figured out, meant 'zero.' However, he also indicates that it can mean everything as a whole, as a circle. Those of you who have seen Darren Aronofsky's 1998 film Pi are now recognizing a major plot thread, as a Hasidic Jew pursues the lead mathematician character in that film for help unraveling Kabbalah secrets!

In their early years (late '80s), Nirvana listened to the Morbid Tales EP on their tour bus. Back then their guitarist was Jason Everman, a big Celtic Frost fan. He turned them on to their drummer, Chad Channing, who dubbed the EP onto the B-side of a cassette with Especially For You by the Smithereens on the A-side. Channing says Celtic Frost was certainly one of the bands that influenced Nirvana from this time period leading to their Nevermind album. "They ditched spandex for leather!" Channing told Songfacts. "And put a whole new meaning to heavy rock music."