TOM GABRIEL FISCHER: 'One Year Ago Today I Left CELTIC FROST'

Former CELTIC FROST and current TRIPTYKON frontman Tom Gabriel Fischer has posted the following message on his blog:

"One year ago today I left CELTIC FROST.

"I had seen the 'Monotheist' album as a mere beginning, and a tame one at that. There was a time when I was not alone with this view and Martin [Eric Ain, bass] and I eagerly shared visions for the group's further path. My mind and spirit were full of energy, creativity, and ideas. CELTIC FROST had become the unconditional focus of my life for the second time. And yet, CELTIC FROST was, of course, not just me alone.

"I left CELTIC FROST after one last two-hour meeting with the band's final drummer, during which I was shown, once again and in no uncertain terms, to which nether regions the approach to personal communication had degenerated and to which implausible level of delusion and complacency certain band members had succumbed. I informed Martin and CELTIC FROST's manager, Antje Lange, of my departure that same night, but Antje delayed the issue of a press release for several days while trying everything humanly possible behind the scenes to still salvage the situation. As did a number of others. Alas, it proved impossible to transcend human feculence. We had managed to turn the once stately CELTIC FROST into a pathetic joke.

"Twelve months is half an eternity in music industry terms. Moreover, each passing year serves as a backdrop to uncounted considerably more important bands and events which engage the tastes and attention of the members of what had once been CELTIC FROST's audience. And it is not only they who have long since resumed looking into the future. My mind and spirit are still full of energy, creativity, and ideas. With the support of a number of truly exceptional people, a few close friends and I spent this past year developing our new group TRIPTYKON — once merely intended to be a darker side-project to CELTIC FROST — from a notion to a serious reality. TRIPTYKON's progress is palpable with every song-writing and rehearsal session. Although much work remains to be completed of course, we are well underway towards completing the music for a first album, and recording sessions are tentatively scheduled for later this summer and fall. Concept, title, and artwork for the album have long since been determined.

"And yet in spite of all of these events and developments, it is not always possible to escape the ghosts of the past. There has never been a shortage of detractors, even outright enemies, in my life, right from the very first month of HELLHAMMER's existence, all through the career of CELTIC FROST, and — of course! — now with TRIPTYKON arising from the contentious remains of CELTIC FROST. It is considerably more contemptible, however, when such detractors are individuals who not too long ago harvested a semblance of a career on the strength of exactly the personal radicalness, determination, and energy they are now loudly execrating. Even an entire year after CELTIC FROST so ignominiously disintegrated, not all of those then involved seem to have begun the process of assessment, self-criticism, and continuance.

"Not too long ago, two of my closest friends to whom I owe so much, Carmen Giger and Giger agent Les Barany, went to visit Martin's tiny metal bar in the red light district of Zurich, in the hopes of meeting Martin. Martin was not there, but CELTIC FROST's final drummer was, having traded his days of glorious global touring for a job as Martin's barkeeper. Said individual proceeded to besiege my friends for some two hours with a deluge of spiteful allegations about me. To describe the uttered fabrications as ludicrous does not even begin to portray the content. Nothing left untried, nothing too low, nothing too cheap in these efforts to badmouth me. It was a torrent of hostility, frustration, and hypocrisy, much as I had seen it unloaded on myself and uncounted others so many times during these past years with CELTIC FROST and numerous times on my friends and anybody who would listen after the band's end. If I really was such a nobody, if I really was the one making it impossible to be a group, if I really had nothing to do whatsoever with CELTIC FROST's music, lyrics, and concept, then why the pitiable lamentations about my departure and the loss of a career and a huge chance? My exit from CELTIC FROST would have then merely served to stabilize the group and disclose the true architects of the group's music and concepts.

"Such verbal baseness, perpetuated no less by one who had no part at all in the creation of music, lyrics, or concepts for albums such as, for example, 'Morbid Tales', 'To Mega Therion', and 'Into The Pandemonium' and only a superficial part in the creation of 'Monotheist'. Moreover, I cannot for the life of me recall any such opposition of his when it was time to play my songs from these albums all over the world as part of a headlining band or to sign uncounted autographs after the concerts for those who came to hear them. Such betrayal of the legacy of a group that had given all of us so much.

"I have been asked if I feel hatred in light of occurrences such as the above. But the word hatred does not accurately portray my feelings. Contempt and sadness are far more appropriate descriptions. Sadness, in particular, about the deceitfulness and the fact that it still seems impossible to be allowed to move on, all of us. Why such destruction when the very best thing all of us ever were a part of in our lives has already been irreversibly destroyed at any rate? What misery.

"What a pleasure, then, and what an honor, to receive the latest issue of Terrorizer magazine yesterday and discover in it an article about my peers and dear friends of MY DYING BRIDE, in which they find incredibly fair and generous words about my past and future work. I bow to you in humility."

TRIPTYKON's lineup also features V. Santura (DARK FORTRESS) and Vanja Slay. The first audio sample, a track called "Crucifixus", can be heard on TRIPTYKON's official MySpace page.

Commented Fischer: "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 [CELTIC FROST's] 'Monotheist'. I desire the album to be a darker, heavier, and slightly more experimental development of 'Monotheist'.

"'Crucifixus' is but one of many compositions to that end. TRIPTYKON is not defined by just this one song, however, just like CELTIC FROST was not defined by 'Totengott' alone."

Fischer recently spent time in Norway as an invited guest of the Norwegian black metallers 1349 while they were recording their new album, "Revelations Of The Black Flame". He previously joined 1349 on stage during the band's appearance at the Inferno festival on March 22, 2008 in Oslo for a rendition of the CELTIC FROST classic "The Usurper".