CELTIC FROST Frontman Talks About The Breakup Of His Marriage

Mike Baronas of GASPetc.com (Gruesome Art, Shocking Persons, et cetera) recently conducted an interview CELTIC FROST mainman Thomas Gabriel Fischer. An excerpt from the chat follows:

GASPetc: May I ask how influential your wife Michelle was to CELTIC FROST after "Into the Pandemonium"?

Fischer: "Hardly at all. I've read a million rumors about the supposed influence of Michelle on CELTIC FROST, but I believe certain things that happened to CELTIC FROST were entirely up to me. Michelle was there and she supported me uncompromisingly in everything I did, but all the mistakes were entirely mine. Later on Michelle even said she regretted that she supported whatever crazy ideas I had and that she should've been much more vigilant because she disagreed with certain things, but she was just the woman by my side and supported me. She probably could've had a very much more positive influence on CELTIC FROST if she actually would've disagreed with me."

GASPetc: But that's obviously a difficult position to question the mastermind behind the band.

Fischer: "You have to understand that I met Michelle when she was 17 and we married when she was 18. Of course, I was this guy who toured all over the world and she probably didn't care to speak her mind right from the beginning. It would've been quite difficult for her to find her self-confidence surrounded by a whole bunch of rock musicians, managers, and the record industry and she's this teenage girl from Texas who never left America before. So, due to this, she had limited influence to begin with.

"She did back up all my ideas, and as we all know now, my ideas weren't always the greatest ones."

GASPetc: I take it you're no longer together.

Fischer: "We separated in 2000 and the divorce became final in 2004."

GASPetc: And I'm sure this is one of the biggest contributing factors to your current state of mind.

Fischer: "Oh yeah! She was the love of my life and losing that marriage was one of the most difficult things I've ever gone through. It was a very prolonged, very dark, very difficult situation and I tried to prevent it for far too long. She needed to change and she didn't, so it was a struggle in vain for me for many years. I confronted her with things in her life that she didn't want to deal with and she never forgave me for that.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think of Michelle because we were an absolutely unique couple, and I wouldn't have married that woman if she hadn't been the love of my life. We were together for 16 years. Our marriage was so intense and so fantastic in the beginning and later it was so drastically painful that no matter how you turn it, it's something that is hard to forget even if you move on. So, of course, she will always be part of my life, whether I want her to be or not.

"But as a part of your life — like the great CELTIC FROST albums, like 'Cold Lake' — these things are in the past and you move on and, of course, I look toward the future. I live very much in the now, but all these things have left a mark on my life in one way or another. With Michelle, love was involved which makes the mark even deeper."

Read the entire interview at GASPetc.com.