Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones

Release Date: March 19th, 2010
Label: Prowling Death/
Century Media

TRACK LISTING

1.  Goetia
2.  Abyss Within My Soul
3.  In Shrouds Decayed
4.  Shrine
5.  A Thousand Lies
6.  Descendant
7.  Myopic Empire
8.  My Pain
9.  The Prolonging

Total playing time:  01:12:42

April 15, 2010

Reviewer: Matt

It wasn’t a big surprise when, in 2008, Celtic Frost disbanded again shortly after completing their tour in support of their brilliant “comeback” album Monotheist.  Monotheist ranks among Celtic Frost’s best works, and it was disappointing to see intrapersonal turmoil once again tear apart the legendary unit.

But Tom Fischer lives music, and not long after Celtic Frost dissolved he announced the formation of a new band, Triptykon.  While Fischer’s brother-in-arms Martin Ain was of course absent, Triptykon’s debut Eparistera Daimones, complete with H.R. Giger cover art, is nevertheless a solid entry in Fischer’s catalogue.

Like its predecessor, Eparistera is an amalgamation of ‘90’s groove metal and Sabbath-inspired doom, retaining the chunky swagger of the former and the colossal heaviness of the latter.  Fischer’s biggest challenge and his biggest success since picking up the axe again has been transcending his new work’s aesthetic similarities to modern mainstream metal like Devildriver and Chimaira.  But he succeeded in spades in retaining the forward-thinking songwriting that made Celtic Frost’s classics so enduring.  And while you could easily picture the opening riff to “Goetia” on the new Fear Factory, Triptykon has zero commercial appeal, as it is teeming with despondency and apathy, is thunderously heavy, and is epic in scope.  Clocking it at well over an hour and bookended by a massive eleven-minute opener and a plodding nineteen-minute closer, Eparistera isn’t a play for commercial success or a shout-out to fickle attention spans.  It’s an exhausting, draining listen and truly one of the heaviest releases in recent memory.

The album is not without its flaws.  While stylistically a continuation of Monotheist, Eparistera doesn’t rival that album in quality.  It tends to get bogged down in its own length, particularly in the latter half, where tracks such as “Descendant” and “The Prolonging” are prolonged long after their point is delivered.  Occasionally pn the shorter tracks (“Abyss Within My Soul”), the riffs seem to track the vocals and the songs are arranged in standard verse-chorus format, drawing uncomfortably close comparisons to “New Wave of American Heavy Metal” mediocrity.  The shortcomings are far from fatal, fortunately, and Eparistera is accordingly one of my most-listened-to albums of the year.

It will be interesting to see where Triptykon goes from here.  The conflicts that fuel Fischer’s fire have torn projects asunder often enough that we’re justifiably apprehensive that Triptkyon might not hold it together for future releases.  Regardless of the future however, Eparistera is more than enough to satisfy for the present, and Fischer has firmly solidified his comeback with another must-have album.

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