After Celtic Frost’s Collapse, Tom Gabriel Fischer Hopes for a Drama-Free Third Act

As the visionary and front man of Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and now Triptykon, Thomas Gabriel Fischer – the artist formerly known as Tom G. Warrior – has had his ups and downs. But the hipsters never got their dirty hands on him.

Emo kids do not wear ironic Celtic Frost shirts. Rivers Cuomo hasn’t name-checked the band in a smash single. After 23 years, the avant-garde metal band was an still an underground phenomenon – even though it was on a serious upswing — when they imploded after 2006’s Monotheist. That critically hailed album continued Fischer’s long tradition of mixing blacker-than-midnight extreme metal with unpredictable, sophisticated elements, like the all-strings instrumental “Winter (Requiem, Chapter Three: Finale).”

Celtic Frost went out on top, no doubt. It might be the most respected iconic metal band from the ‘80s. It’s definitely not the most popular act — but unlike Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth, the group doesn’t have a countless contingent of full-time haters.

Granted, Frost made some missteps, real and perceived. 1988’s Cold Lake, the band’s major-label debut, is the heaviest hair-metal album ever recorded. Some fans flinched at experiments from the tail end of the decade, like a French spoken-word piece (“Tristesses de la Lune”), a rap interlude (“Human II”), and a techno track (“One in Our Pride”). But the seminal band helped make corpse paint and symphonic metal part of the extreme-music playbook. They ripped shit up, too, but it drove Fischer nuts when writers tried to classify Frost as part of the thrash movement.

Celtic Frost has few critics more frank than Fischer himself. The singer-guitarist wrote most of the lyrics and music, and was the only member of the band to appear on every release. He spent over three years making sure Monotheist was a worthy continuation of the Celtic Frost legacy. The tour should have been a victory lap, but it turned into a death march. Simmering tensions between Fischer and cofounder-bassist Martin Eric Ain came to a head on the road, and Warrior quit his own band in April 2008.

“I once made the mistake to continue Celtic Frost without Martin,” Fischer recently explained on the Triptykon forum. “It wasn’t Celtic Frost, in spite of the name, and the results were stunningly pitiful (to put it nicely). I will not repeat that mistake…. In 2005, Martin and I also signed an agreement which prohibits either one of us to continue as Celtic Frost without the other one.”

In short order, Fischer announced the formation of Triptykon, which he promised would “sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible.” Tracks from the band’s debut have been emerging over the last few month, and Eparistera Daimones will arrive in the States this Tuesday, March 23. Fischer and company make good on his promise.

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MARCH IS METAL MONTH IS UNDERWAY!!! And as Vince promised last week, there’s a free sampler now avail featuring artists from many of the participating labels. That means you can download tracks by Fear Factory, Ihsahn, Triptykon, Suicide Silence, Lacuna Coil, Queensryche, White Wizzard, and more, all for the cost of breathing. Head over to Amazon to get the absolutely free download.

We’ll also have lots more March is Metal Month goodness in the coming weeks, including additional interviews and contests. Keep checking back here, or head over to MarchIsMetalMonth.com for all the latest.

I’ve been looking for some reason – any reason – to write about Eparistera Daimones, the debut album from Tom G. Warrior’s new project, Triptykon. It’s been in constant rotation here at the Axl Annex ever since we received it a couple of weeks ago. This album RULES. Yesterday Cosmo Lee praised it for sounding “MASSIVE” and being a logical continuation of Celtic Frost’s Monotheist,” but I actually think it’s superior to Monotheist – it’s that fucking good.

The band has steadily been releasing some teaser videos, which are pretty lame and, unfortunately, don’t even hint at what a great record they’ve made. But the album’s March 23 release date (via Century Media) is closer than you think (it’s almost March already!!!), and I fear if I don’t post this, I’ll never have an excuse to tell you all to seek this bad boy out.

So don’t judge Eparistera Daimones by this video. Just trust me and get it when it comes out in a few weeks.

-AR

UPDATE: HEY, LOOKIT THAT! Here’s the cover in all its glory. My stupid original story after the jump.

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Just a couple of weeks ago I was wondering if Triptykon, Thomas Gabriel Fischer’s post-Celtic Frost project, were ever gonna announce a release date for their debut album. I should have been more media savvy, though; the band didn’t release two new tracks just ’cause Tommy Boy wanted to share his art with you. There was an announcement in the works.

And that announcement has arrived, by way of e-mail press release! Hoo-ray! Here’s what that e-mail press release says:

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It’s been well over a year since Thomas Gabriel Fischer announced he was leaving Celtic Frost and starting a new band, Triptykon, and there’s still no friggin’ album. And I fucking hated the first song the band released, “Crucifixus,” which was basically several minutes of droning seemingly designed to punish anyone hoping Triptykon might make actual music.

But now Mr. Fischer has bounced back with not one but two, count ‘em two, new Triptykon songs – “Abyss Within My Soul” and “A Thousand Lies.” And they totally redeem Tom G. Warrior for the awfulness that was “Crucifixus.”

These songs – which score right off the bat by being actual, y’know, songs – make good on Fischer’s promise that “Triptykon will sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible” and “will feature all the material I envisioned for the successor to [Celtic Frost's] Monotheist.” These tracks strikes me as very Monotheistical, and that can only be a good thing. Unless you’re a dick. Or deaf. In which case I apologize for calling you a dick. And wonder what you’re doing reading this site.

But I digress! Still no word on a release date for Triptykon’s debut, but hopefully we’ll get it sometime in 2010. In the meantime, check out the new shit here.

-AR

Thanks to Jason Beter for the tip!

While Anthrax, Testament, Heaven and Hell and motherfucking Motorhead are among the most anticipated bands that metal pilgrims are converging on western Germany to see, it would appear that my favored people, those crafty Norwegians, also have a few things planned for the mayhem. While Enslaved will be appearing (and hopefully represented on a good stage, because you know they fucking deserve it) some others are teaming up with foreigners in combinations that are hard to ignore.

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Have you ever known a couple that had a baby, and then the baby died, and so they had a sort of “replacement baby,” like another baby to take the place of the dead one?

Well, I guess the concept applies to bands, too, ’cause a mere six weeks after quitting Celtic Frost, Thomas Gabriel Fischer – who I will always always always insist on calling “Tom G. Warrior” – has announced the formation of a new project, Triptykon (awful name, Tom), to basically pick up where Celtic Frost left off:

“Triptykon will sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible, and the album I am working on will feature all the material I envisioned for the successor to Monotheist. I desire the album to be a darker, heavier, and slightly more experimental development of Monotheist.”

Well, I think we can commend Fischer/Warrior for coming right out and saying he basically wants to create Celtic Frost Version 2.0 (or 3.0, depending on how big a douche bag you are), as opposed to being the umpteenth musician to promise fans something “new” before releasing just another variation on their past discography.

What we can’t commend Fischer/Warrior for is “Cucifixus,” the demo now posted on the band’s MySpace page. Apparently, calling this new group “slightly more experimental” than Celtic Frost is the understatement of the year: the song is basically like two and half minutes of waiting for an actual song to start (has Tommy been listening to a lot of Bloody Panda lately?); put more succinctly, it sounds like Lustmord, but without all of the baggage of being, y’know, good.

Still, Fischer/Warrior is careful to say that the song “is but one of many compositions to that end. Triptykon is not defined by just this one song.” Hopefully we’ll get something more substantial (and enticing) soon.

-AR