CELTIC FROST
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TRIPTYKON
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW (2025)
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At the culmination of this year’s instalment of the much-respected Incineration Festival in London in early May, Triptykon will perform a very special concert dedicated to Celtic Frost, the band from whose ashes they, of course, rose in the late 2000s. The set will visit a number of standout songs from the band’s back catalogue as well as a number of less obvious classics, the setting being none other than London’s prestigious and historic Roundhouse venue in Camden.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, Cult Never Dies is proud to once again join forces with one of our longtime collaborators and present an exclusive limited edition Into The Pandemonium shirt, as well as a very small number of even more limited Triptykon and Celtic Frost solid silver pendants. Naturally all this is also a good excuse for a new interview, and so we caught up with Thomas Gabriel Fischer, better known to many as Tom G Warrior, discussing not only the event itself, but Celtic Frost’s legacy and the new Triptykon album.
Dayal Patterson: You will soon be headlining The Roundhouse in London – is that something that fills you with joy or trepidation?
Thomas Gabriel Fischer: “My entire life is one of trepidation [both laugh]. Playing in London… I mean, you know my story. Without journalists from the UK, without journalists from London, I would be nowhere. I wouldn’t exist as a musician. The people from Sounds and Kerrang! enabled me to have my breakthrough in the mid-1980s, and it’s something I’ve never forgotten. It really is a very personal issue for me; every time I’m in London, I think about this, and I’m still friends with all these people. And coincidentally, the very first concert Celtic Frost ever played in London is almost exactly 40 years ago to the date of the Incineration festival. So a lot of things come full circle. And I hope to see some of my friends who enabled my career to exist – Dante Bonutto, Dave Ling, Xavier Russell, Paul Elliott, Phil Alexander. It’s always very special to play in London.”
How did this come about? Was it your idea, or was it the festival that approached you to play a specially themed set?
“It was the festival. It’s a controversial thing, in a way, that Triptykon plays Celtic Frost. I formed Triptykon as a continuation of Celtic Frost, and, in honour of Martin Ain, I didn’t call it Celtic Frost even though everybody in the industry told me, ‘Just continue as Celtic Frost, you’re the songwriter, you’re the main songwriter.’ But I didn’t want to do that, and I had a standing agreement with Martin that we could only call a band Celtic Frost if both of us were part of it. But Triptykon, in essence, is the continuation of Celtic Frost after the implosion of egos in 2008. So from the very beginning, I wanted to keep this music alive that we had written and played in Celtic Frost. So Triptykon always played around 50% Celtic Frost material and 50% Triptykon material, as Celtic Frost would have done had Celtic Frost continued – we would have always played old songs along with new songs.”
“Playing a full set of Celtic Frost music, of course, is a different thing, and some people probably think we’re doing this to milk the catalogue, or because we cannot come up with our own music, which is not true. The idea to play Celtic Frost sets usually comes from the outside. It’s usually a festival that asks us, ‘Would you be up for it?’ And every single time we discuss it in the band; ‘Shall we do this? Is it the right time? Is it the right thing to do?’ And at this time, when we were invited to play Incineration, we were asked by the festival, ‘Would you play a special Celtic Frost set?’ and we discussed it, and we felt, yeah, especially because it’s London, yeah, we’ll do it.”
With such a huge and varied back catalogue, how do you narrow things down and choose a set list?
“It’s very difficult. We have four people, and everybody has a different opinion of what constitutes the important music of Celtic Frost. We have a set list, but I don’t think it’s definite yet, I think it’s going to still go through minor changes here and there. I have to admit, I’m sometimes slightly tired of some of the very early songs that I’ve been playing for 40-odd years. And I know that there’s a lot of late Celtic Frost music from Into the Pandemonium or Monotheist that has not been played on stage yet, and I would like to shift it more towards that period. But then the younger members of Triptykon come and say, ‘No, we have to play that, that’s a cool song, ‘Crypt of Rays’, and ‘Morbid Tales’ are important,’ and this and that. And of course I realise that, and it’s not that I hate these songs, but I think there are also songs we hardly ever played. So there’s always endless discussions, and since I don’t want to be a dictator – there are enough dictators in the world right now, I don’t have to join their ranks – it’s always a democratic decision.”
Can you give some more insight on the songs you’ve chosen?
“We are playing three songs from Into the Pandemonium, and not necessarily the most obvious ones. We wanted to pay some respect to the more ‘new wave’, experimental songs. So two of the three we’re playing are quite ‘out there’, so hopefully people will get a very decent cross-section of the entire Celtic Frost catalogue from Morbid Tales to Monotheist. We’ll play two songs from Monotheist that have not been performed. One of them has never been performed, not even by Celtic Frost, and the other one has not been performed since the implosion of Celtic Frost. So we’re trying to make it interesting also for us.”
Is there any Celtic Frost song you wouldn’t play? I’m assuming you wouldn’t choose any songs from Cold Lake and Vanity/Nemesis, for example?
“Well, not Cold Lake obviously. Why would I do that to myself? [Laughs] And actually there have been some suggestions in the band that we should play something from Vanity/Nemesis, but grumpy old Tom can’t see this happening.”
You don’t like that album at all, right?
“No, it’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just irrelevant. It really doesn’t live up to the Celtic Frost standard, does it? I mean, it’s an okay metal album, but it’s completely irrelevant. There’s really nothing brave on this album.”
How do you feel today about the more upbeat songs from your earlier albums, such as your cover of Wall of Voodoo’s ‘Mexican Radio’?
“Well, maybe you can have a talk to the younger members of my band. I’ve been suggesting a ‘Mexican Radio’ for years, and some of the younger members of my band are a bit hesitant. I know the song is a sacrilege for a band that also has connections to black metal and extreme metal. Nonetheless, it’s an extremely energetic song, and it’s also Celtic Frost bowing to one of the new wave bands that we used to listen to at the time, so I don’t see anything wrong with it. Maybe eventually it will happen.”
What about the equally memorable ‘I Won’t Dance’? Obviously it’s a far cry from the dark and experimental approach that people tend to associate with Celtic Frost today, but it’s also a popular song among longtime fans.
“Why not? It’s probably difficult to play it precisely, especially since I’m always under-rehearsed. But I quite like the song. I think I’ve become a much better vocalist in the 35-whatever years since, and I think I could probably do it better justice nowadays. And also I have a V. Santura on guitar who does fantastic backing vocals, so I’m sure we could pull it off. I mean, we played it with Celtic Frost occasionally, so I don’t see why not, but I think right now we’re probably focusing more on the experimental and dark songs. But there’s plenty of material from that album that still could be played. ‘Caress into Oblivion’ is a song that I’ve also been trying to push on Triptykon for many years because it has never been performed live, and I would like to try it.”
The Roundhouse is obviously a sizeable and very historic venue. Over the years, it has welcomed a wealth of prestigious artists, from Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and Jimi Hendrix to The Clash, Motörhead, The Sisters of Mercy, and many more.
“I have never been there, never played it, but I know very well what it is, of course. I feel it’s quite an honour for us to play. It’s one of those venues… you know, it’s not a venue that you see every day when you’re playing. And again, you’re not talking to a UK musician here. When I started out, it was exceedingly rare for a Swiss heavy band to play in the UK, in America, and making these steps with Celtic Frost was an incredible honour, and even though nowadays it has become a little more common, for me personally, I could never forget that this is not an ordinary thing, it’s not a guaranteed thing. I’m still carrying this within me every time I fly to the UK to play a concert or to America to play a concert. So to up this by playing The Roundhouse… it’s not a routine thing.”
As far as revisiting songs from the last 40 years – is that something you welcome? Celtic Frost, and your music in general, has largely been about pioneering new sounds and exploring new territories, so to do something which is looking backwards… is there a paradox there for you?
“A complex question in a way. Because if you spend your youth dreaming of becoming a musician and everything around you makes it look like it’s never going to happen, and then it actually does happen, and your songs become well-known enough that people demand to hear them even 40 years later, that’s quite an honour. So I’m not approaching these songs in a vacuum. It doesn’t really matter what I think of these songs. I would have never thought I would be sitting here talking with you about a concert where we play Celtic Frost songs in 2025, when I was like a 13-year-old teenager being torn apart by the fanatical wish of just playing an instrument in a band. And I’m not talking about being famous, just in the local youth centre headbanging with a guitar or a bass in my hand. I would have given everything for this. And here I am 44 years since I started playing music, and my music is apparently still in demand, so I can headline in London with these songs. So that’s not an abstract question to me, there’s just so many levels to it.”
“As for my personal preferences or feelings, there are weeks where I would prefer to play Triptykon material because it’s, of course, closer to who I am right now. There are weeks when I feel extremely nostalgic, and I miss Steve Warrior and Hellhammer, and I miss Martin Ain and Celtic Frost. Playing these songs brings me very close, as close as I can get, to that time. And just last week, I was in Berlin for a collaboration with another artist, and I spent an off day doing a pilgrimage to all the studios where I recorded Morbid Tales and To Mega Therion. I went to the location where Noise Records had their first office, where for the first time sat in a record company’s office, and where Martin and I first saw the cover of Emperor’s Return on the wall, and where I negotiated – because we didn’t have a manager – I negotiated a contract to be a little bit better, and so on. I did a pilgrimage and photographed everything. So these songs have so many levels for me, even if I occasionally get tired of playing one of them or the other, because I’ve played them 5000 times, they are in a way my children, and they’ve defined my entire life. And I’m extremely grateful that there’s an audience who has given that gift to me. And it would be extremely arrogant to just think about my feelings. And there are weeks where I’m dying to play ‘Into the Crypts of Rays’, for example, even though I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve played that song. But when I play it, I instantly remember when we practised it for the first time, and I brought it to the rehearsal room in 1984. It’s really a time machine.”
We will be presenting limited edition shirts and jewellery pieces at the London show. The shirts are pretty self-explanatory, but could you tell us a little bit more about the pendants?
“We started doing some jewellery at the end of Celtic Frost when we did the Monotheist album and Martin and I really liked these pieces, and we wore them ourselves all the time, because, again, starting as a tiny little underground band that had no facilities for anything like that, it was quite something for us to have all these things. It was a nice little token, and I always had the intention of repeating this, and we, of course, did the Triptykon T as a pendant some years ago. And then H.R. Giger’s widow surprised me: She had secretly crafted a pure silver Triptykon ‘T’, which looks fantastic, and I’m wearing it every day. And I really thought we should actually do this as merchandise because it’s really nice – it’s actually jewellery, and it’s beautiful. And it’s not like doing dog food or something, it’s actually connected to the band.”
“So we always had this intention, and then the Giger Museum, after the death of Giger agent Leslie Barany – who was a part of crafting these Celtic Frost pendants and also the silver Triptykon ‘T’ – after he died, all his possessions were locked down because his relatives fought for the inheritance. But recently that was solved and out of the blue the Giger Museum received a whole package full of moulds and in there were some Celtic Frost and Triptykon moulds, which to me was like a sign.”
So did you know that those existed?
“I didn’t know, I really didn’t know. Leslie Barany, the Giger agent, was one of my closest friends, but a very difficult person, and his apartment was crammed to the ceiling with interesting things, and in there somewhere were our things. And I didn’t know if they existed and if they did exist, were they still in a usable form? So I was completely blown away when the museum approached me like a year ago and said, ‘Look we received some stuff that I think you should have.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, I never expected that.’ And here we are.”
Beyond this gig, what can you tell us about what’s happening with Triptykon at the moment?
“Well, there’s another bridge between the old songs and my present life. It’s also significant to play these songs while we are working on new material with Triptykon. I actually believe that’s quite essential, because even though Triptykon is the result of a decades-long path, I don’t want to lose the connection to the early days. I don’t want to write these new songs in a vacuum where I’m not connected to anything I’ve done before. I think it’s actually quite healthy for me to, in the middle of working on the new album, delve into Morbid Tales material, or delve into To Mega Therion material. I need to remember who Tom is; if you play for decades, sometimes you stray from your path, and I don’t think that’s healthy – of course, you should reinvent yourself, but you should never forget who you are as a musician, and how you sound, and what the essence of your music is. And I think that helps, to occasionally take a trip to the stage and play these Celtic Frost sets. And that’s what we’re doing this year.”
Are you aware then of certain Celtic Frost-isms creeping into the new material? Do you have a sense of where you’re going with the album, or is it still too early to say?
“Well, I think at the end of the day, it’s still always me. When we have guests at the rehearsal room, whenever I turn on my guitar, people say, ‘It sounds like you.’ So it doesn’t really matter what song it is. I apparently have some kind of style – my mother would disagree – that is very recognisable, and that, except for Cold Lake, you cannot banish from me. It’s very difficult to predict the new album though. I have two things in my mind. I have the concept of an album in my mind: I know exactly what an album at this point of Triptykon’s career should be called and what it should be like. And then on the other side I have a million of things on my computer, I have things in my notebooks, and I have things in my head, but they are in all directions, and we will be playing some of these things in the coming months, and work on them, refine them, record them. But I don’t know yet what we will do, what we will select for the final layout of the album. I don’t really know yet if it’s going to match what I think the album should be or if the artistic freedom in all of us will take it in a slightly different direction. I have something very, very dark, very, very antagonistic in my mind musically, but I don’t know if it’s going to be exactly like that, because at the same time I’m also playing with dark but very melodic things. So we will see where it goes. At the moment we’re just amassing material, and then at some point we will select which material we really will polish to the end, and which material we will select for final album.”
You mentioned the band being a democracy, I mean how does that work on a practical level?
“Yeah, it’s a shit idea [both laugh]. To be quite honest I also see the limits of that. Because right now, for example, there’s a lot of pressure on this album. I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve done... I’ve been granted successful albums ever since the last Celtic Frost album. But that basically also means that everybody expects that my next album is also a successful album, and I’m the last person to know how to do this, I think I told you this before. I don’t have a secret recipe for this. So there’s quite a lot of pressure. Of course, I’m ignoring the pressure, but I know it’s there, I mean, it’s not my first day in the industry. But I also noticed that the band is basically waiting for me, and I would like it to be a little more proactive, I don’t want to be the only one to be submitting material to face that pressure. And even though I was also the main songwriter in Celtic Frost, Martin Ayn did bring music and especially lyrics. And that was very helpful, and also we bounced the ideas off each other, like every day. And in Triptykon, we are a very democratic band, but I feel a bit lonely as far as being the only full-time creator in this band, it’s not just fun, you know? If we fail, it’s all my fault. I mean, I can live with that, but it would be nice to have the best ideas of everybody, and just take the best. Democracy is something that I firmly believe should be part of a band. I really don’t like bands that are driven by a single ego. On the other hand, of course, I also sometimes explore the limits of democracy, such as this.”
Was it more comfortable in Frost, in the sense that you had another long-time collaborator so that the weight kind of shared on both your shoulders to some extent?
“Well, comfortable is probably the wrong word because Martin and I very often had very, very different opinions and we fought very hard for our ideas. But that was exactly the secret recipe. We really had to defend our ideas and prove that they work. Especially on Monotheist, we had such an abundance of material that we spent days discussing lyrics, and arrangements, and riffs, and everything. But it made us focus, and it made us improve. It was like both of us being each other’s supervisor. And that was a very difficult and exhausting but also very healthy process. And it’s something that, in the very last meeting me and Martin had two and a half weeks before his death, we actually talked about that. We said we had a lot of disagreements, but at the end of the day, we always managed to turn them into something very unusual, something very creative. And we were very happy about that.”
So I guess your current bandmates don’t have the same level of confidence because they must see it, to some extent, as your legacy or you kind of piloting the ship.
“It’s probably a little more complex than that. We are a very close-knit group of friends, and, for example, V. Santura is an absolute expert as a producer, as a guitar player and also as a songwriter in his own ventures. But of course, he has played in Celtic Frost; he knows the legacy of Martin Ain. I think he would never claim to be a second Martin Ain – neither would I, by the way. I think there might be too much respect at times, because they all have been exposed to Celtic Frost in one way or another. Our bassist, Vanja, has been to Celtic Frost rehearsals many times when Celtic Frost still existed and so on. I mean, maybe they don’t think they can come up with such things. Maybe they can’t. I don’t know. It’s speculation. But at the end of the day, even though I’m running it as a band, I think Triptykon is a bit of a solo project of mine, even though I don’t want it to be that way. But just the nature of reality makes it so.”
I think that it would be strange if it wasn’t that in a way.
“Well, I’ve always felt comfortable in a band. I mean, after the demise of Celtic Frost, I could have continued solo, but I always felt comfortable in a band. It was always the replacement of the family that I didn’t have when I was young, so I always felt very happy to be part of a band.”
So any final words for people who are reading this and are going to be attending? What can they expect?
“Well, hopefully they can expect that we don’t fuck up. It’s an ambitious set list so far, and as I said, there are songs in there that we have never played and that even Celtic Frost never played. So we are doing our due diligence, because as I said earlier at the beginning of the interview, playing London is not just any concert to us. There’s quite a sense of duty and honour inside of us for this city to play as a Swiss band. And we’re certainly trying our best to live up to that, to the gift of being invited to play the Roundhouse. And yeah, I’m trying to try to be good enough to pretend that I’m a musician on stage.”
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Incineration Festival takes place London on Saturday 3rd May and will include 3000 people attending Camden venues The Roundhouse, the Electric Ballroom, The Underworld, The Black Heart and The Devonshire Arms to see a wide range of extreme metal bands including Triptykon, Decapitated, Batushka, Cryptopsy, Lamp Of Murmuur and Undergang.
The exclusive Into The Pandemonium T shirt and extremely limited edition Triptykon and Celtic Frost solid silver pendants will be available from the Cult Never Dies stand at the Electric Ballroom during Incineration Festival. This unique jewellery has been hand-cast from the original moulds produced by the HR Giger estate and is limited to four pieces of each.
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