TRIPYTKON is the next logical step in the musical evolution of Thomas Gabriel Fischer, better known as Tom G. Warrior, who unfortunately had to quit CELTIC FROST again due to personal differences after their 2006 reunion album “Monotheist”. Next to Tom, the TRIPTYKON line-up consists of drummer Norman Lonhard (from now defunct Century Media labelmates FEAR MY THOUGHTS), guitarist V. Santura (DARK FORTRESS, NONEUCLID) and Vanja Slajh on bass. Even though it may be a new monicker and different musicians here, it’s pretty obvious that TRIPYTKON still stays 100% true to Tom’s already pretty long and diverse musical journey. Visually perfectly reflected in another amazing H.R. Giger painting, the first one that the wellknown Swiss artist gave his permission to since CELTIC FROST’s 1985’s “To Mega Therion” album. In fact, the whole packaging of the CD almost looks like a hardcover book edition (in CD size though), with a 28-pages booklet that features all lyrics and liner notes to each song, written by Tom, as well as additional pieces of artwork. As soon as I had inserted the CD into my player I already knew that it wouldn’t become an easy listening session in the much hated “Cold Lake” direction as the total playing time of the album is a little bit over 70 minutes (and we’re just speaking of 9 songs here)… So, if I had to compare “Eparistera Daimones” to any other album that Tom was involved in so far (HELLHAMMER / CELTIC FROST / APOLLYON SUN) I would say its probably closest to CELTIC FROST’s “Monotheist” due to its overall very dark and melancholic, yet extremely heavy overall approach and musical diversity – just better! From the opening riff of the 11 minutes long first track ‘Goetia’ (that recalls HELLHAMMER’s ‘Triumph Of Death’ main riff a bit) to the almost 20 minutes long album closer ‘The Prolonging’ you’ll be taken on a rollercoaster ride of death, doom and depression… No matter if you prefer it extremely heavy or if you get a kick out of Tom’s quite melancholic sounding “Into The Pandemonium” – vocal style (that he uses in track number 3, ‘In Shrouds Decayed’, for the very first time again), this album should have something on offer for every fan of his past works. ‘Abyss Within My Soul’ for example kicks off with a very classic CELTIC FROST riff, just played a lot heavier, while the speedy opening of ‘A Thousand Lies’ even made me think of SEPULTURA’s “Chaos A.D”. And all those of you who still can’t get enough of Tom’s typical ‘Uh’s!’ will be pleased to hear that one also found its way onto this album, at exactly 2:40 minutes in ‘Descendent’… The very heavy, yet quite monotonous ‘Myopic Empire’ gets interrupted at 3:10 minutes for about a minute by a beautiful piano interlude, accompanied by some female whispering, before it returns to the usual heaviness and ‘My Pain’ is another very emotional, moody tune that almost exclusively consists of piano, sweet female vocals and a spoken male part. But most of the time “Eparistera Daimones” is an extremely heavy, crushing, very powerful produced record that I personally enjoy a lot more than “Monotheist” (which I still can’t really get into up to this day). So, if you can live with the fact that you will never hear another “Apocalyptic Raids”, “Morbid Tales”, “Emperor’s Return” or “To Mega Therion” from Mr.Fischer again, you should give this a try! It’s definitely one of his strongest, most ambitious and personal albums since the glorious early days of CELTIC FROST! www.triptykon.net, www.myspace.com/triptykonofficial, www.centurymedia.com