Ex-CELTIC FROST Mainman: 'There Are Certain Parts Of Me That Are Eager To Die'

Russia's Darkside webzine recently conducted an interview with former HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST and current TRIPTYKON mainman Tom Gabriel Fischer. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Darkside: What is the message behind your latest album, "Eparistera Daimones"?

Tom: The message behind it is very difficult, it's a very personal album. The album reflects a certain stage of my life. It was created during a time when there were a lot of problems in my life, a lot of darkness, and, of course, it's nothing unusual to say something like that in the scene, so it sounds like a huge clich, but it's a very personal album. I lost a band, CELIC FROST, that was the center of my life, that was everything to me, and I lost that under very difficult circumstances. It changed my life completely, and on such stage of my life I created this album, "Eparistera Daimones".

Darkside: People are fond of classifying music into genres. How would you classify TRIPTYKON yourself?

Tom: It sounds like CELTIC FROST. [Laughs] That's how I classify it. TRIPTYKON is a continuation of my past that started with HELLHAMMER and then went on with CELTIC FROST. I'm continuing exactly that path. But if you really must put a label on it, I just always say we're a hard rock band or heavy rock band, I don't even like to go any further, you know. There's so many things that are part of TRIPTYKON's sound, it's impossible to say whether it's black metal, or thrash metal, or death metal, or doom metal there's so many things in there. I've played this music 30 years before all this tags even existed, so should I label it? I think not.

Darkside: You've never really fit into the parameters of black metal, so why do you think you've been so popular among its fans?

Tom: I'm not so popular; there are also many people that hate me with a passion. [laughs] I've been creating extreme music for over 30 years, and extreme music creates extreme reactions, whether positive or negative. But, you know, I'm not creating "elevator music." I create extreme metal, and the reactions are as passionate as extreme. I write my music for myself. My music is me performing exorcism on my own demons, my own therapy, me dealing with the things that are going on in my mind. And what happens beyond that is neither intentional nor is under my control. Of course it's flattering if somebody likes your music, but that's not why I'm writing my music. I'm writing my music for my own sanity.

Darkside: You told now you are experiencing a new period of your life. What has led to it? What made some things change? Or did the changes happen naturally?

Tom: I think it's both. I've found that I look at myself in a very different manner the older I become. It's probably a part of life experience, I've traveled the world all my life, there's so many things that have happened in my life and hopefully that reflects itself through some life experience. And that allows me to look at myself with different eyes than when I was much younger, and I feel I'm in a completely different place than I've never been in my life. Of course this has also reflected in my music, my lyrics have changed, and so on. I don't like to be stagnant, I don't like to remain at the same place, I like to move. I'm not dead yet, you know, I exist, I live, I've been creative, and that needs to manifest itself.

Darkside: Tell us more about your death-mask project and such works as Jesus crucified on a dildo that can be seen in your blog.

Tom: Yeah, what about that? [Laughs] People hated me doing that to Jesus. I'm not a religious person whatsoever; I don't believe in anything: neither Satan, nor God, nor anything else. I don't believe, that's the end of it. Yet having said that, that little phallus statue, it's not even a comment on Jesus, I don't give a shit, you know?! It's a comment on human mankind; Phallus I/2011. Because to me, what the Church does with Jesus is using as a phallus to lead people around. The whole statue is a comment on mankind, and their religious patterns. It's not about Jesus, whether he existed or not, I don't really care. It's a mirror of mankind, and all the outrage that happened, when I put this on my blog, is simply a confirmation that they really do threat him as a phallus. He really is a phallic symbol, and that just proved the validity of my little sculpture.

Darkside: You've said that you are indifferent to any religion, but why then would you raise this topic (Christianity, Satanism, dark side) so often in your artistic works?

Tom: Because it determined the whole history of the world. Human beings have been scared of things ever since the Stone Age. When we came out of the caves and got scared of the big world outside, we couldn't explain everything. So we always gathered around the leader, whether the leader is a dictator or a god or whatever. We always needed to have some security, a leader that knows everything and takes care of us. And religion is of course and exponent of that. And it's an endless source of interest.

Darkside: Have you ever thought about your own "perfect death scenario"?

Tom: (laughs) To me death is perfection anyway. I'm not afraid of death. There are certain parts of me that are eager to die, because I'm very sick and tired of this human planet. To me, death is like an escape, it is beauty, it's the final peace from this shit we've created on this planet, from this destroying nature, from killing animals, from killing each other, from just destroying whatever we get in our hands. I don't enjoy that. And death is the ultimate escape.

Read the entire interview from Darkside webzine.