Triptykon's first album, Eparistera Daimones, was the heaviest breakup album of recent memory. The album was fueled by the anger within Triptykon's guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter Thomas Gabriel Fischer—better known as Tom G. Warrior—over the tumultuous breakup of Celtic Frost, the pioneering metal group he was long associated with. Celtic Frost laid the foundation for death and black metal, pushing metal into more obscure territories with riffing inspired by both classical music and Discharge; the group's Gothic sensibilities in songwriting and dress still loom over underground metal. Fischer became the “Dethroned Emperor” he once sang about from Celtic Frost's internal strife, and he wasn't going to take that lying down. Melana Chasmata is the follow up to Daimones, and while it retains much of the strength of its predecessor, it doesn't quite feel like the triumph Triptykon's debut did.
This is not to say the album lacks passion—far from it, in fact. To grasp the intensity of Chasmata, Fischer's uneven musical history needs to be considered. Despite their enormous influence, Celtic Frost were never a stable group, and their attempt at glam metal, Cold Lake, remains a despised record amongst metal diehards. (In retrospect, had it been released under a different moniker, Lake would be considered a fine glam record.) Fischer quit music altogether following the first dissolution of Celtic Frost and moved to the States for a brief time; in the mid-'90s, he formed Apollyon Sun, a group whose limp industrial metal sounded like it was trying too hard to sound current. Fischer placed himself in a tough position to bounce back from, but somehow, he did it: around the turn of the century, he rebooted Celtic Frost and invited Martin Ain, the band's longtime on-and-off bassist, back into the fold. 2006's Monotheist sounded different from Celtic Frost's previous records, and for a minute it seemed like the reformed Celtic Frost actually had something to say—but that all fell apart.
So Fischer's rocky history lent a drive to push himself that's evident in Triptykon's music. As with Daimones, Chasmata is a series of dense compositions filled with the dark crunch of Fischer's and V. Santura's guitars, set to changing currents from outright malestrom to creeping death fog. “Tree of Suffocating Souls” wastes no time in getting into action, immediately blasting where “Goetia,” the leadoff track from Daimones, took two minutes to speed up. Chasmata features faster songs than its predicessor, but the close-haning gloom is still prevalent, as Triptykon give special focus to Vanja Šlajh's bass, which lingers in “Boleskin House” and “Demon Pact” to the point where you feel tension in your skin. When I interviewed Fischer three years ago following Triptykon's first American tour, he said that the low end is vital to the band, citing his disappointment with amateur concert recordings: “If you record it with some cheap microphone on a cell phone...you will lose a lot of the heaviness and darkness that is experienced when you stand in the crowd.” Nothing is taken lightly in this group, and they've got the chops to carry the weight of such seriousness.
Fischer's dedication to Triptykon is also evident in Chasmata's liner notes, which feature his commentary on each of the album's songs, giving a glimpse into Fischer's thought process and outside inspirations. “In The Sleep of Death” is a tribute to Emily Brontë, and Fischer says the following about "Breathing": "Much of what we experienced and created was dominated by a solemn, at times even despondent mood." Offering an in-depth look into the creative process is not something a lot of metal musicians would do, and it's more evidence that even after three decades, Fischer feels he's still got something to prove.
Fischer is one of the few on his level who can write compelling mid-tempo parts, and that carries over into Chasmata: “Breathing” is straight Celtic Frost-esque thrash, and around the three minute mark the whole band becomes slave to the primitive lockstep of Fischer's riffing. His avant-garde tendencies also live on in Triptykon, but thankfully, they're more streamlined and fitting with the atmosphere on Chasmata*.* “Pact”'s layered noise is not unlike a digital Penderecki string section, while “Sleep” sees Fischer taking on a more theatrically pained tone in his voice.
Ultimately, Chasmata is slightly inferior to its predecessor due to a sequencing issue near the record's end. The sprawling “Black Snow” transitions to “Waiting”, a lovely track but maybe not the best song to close out the record, making Chasmata a record that doesn't quite have the ending to tie everything together. Fischer has managed to stay relevant, and he should be commended for that. The moving Chasmata is a mark of longevity, then, but lacks the bombastic “We're back” quality that Triptykon's debut had—fitting, since first impressions are usually the most lasting.
