During an appearance on a recent episode of the Iblis Manifestations podcast, former HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST and current TRIPTYKON singer, guitarist and main songwriter Tom Gabriel Fischer (a.k.a. Tom Gabriel Warrior) spoke about TRIPTYKON‘s appearance at the Incineration festival in London, United Kingdom earlier this month where he and his bandmates once again played a special set consisting of nothing but CELTIC FROST material. He said in part: “I have to really state this because some lovable haters of mine always say, ‘Stick to TRIPTYKON. Are you so desperate to play CELTIC FROST?’ And there’s a lot of things to say about that, which I won’t do now. I’m just gonna state the most obvious. I wrote these fucking songs, and these songs are my life. Almost every single CELTIC FROST song had had a profound influence on my life, whether I liked it or not. And (late HELLHAMMER and CELTIC FROST bassist) Martin (Ain), too, of course. And there’s no way I’m gonna spend the rest of my life without that music. I formed TRIPTYKON specifically to continue CELTIC FROST‘s path. And, of course, TRIPTYKON have continued as CELTIC FROST would have. TRIPTYKON is basically CELTIC FROST by a different name. I wasn’t gonna be cheap and call it CELTIC FROST without Martin, but it is essentially… I’m operating exactly like CELTIC FROST. We’ve always played CELTIC FROST music because it’s part of my life. And we also, of course, play TRIPTYKON music, because it is also part of my life.”

Circling back to TRIPTYKON‘s appearance at Incineration, Tom said: “The show yesterday being entirely CELTIC FROST — all the shows where TRIPTYKON play CELTIC FROST only are by request of the festival, not by ‘Tom being desperate’ or ‘Tom wanting to cash in.’ Which is another issue. When people say, ‘Yeah, he wants to cash in on his history with CELTIC FROST.’ Well, if you go to work, you expect a salary — everybody. If you’re a baker, yeah, you wanna cash in on the bread you sell. Oh my fucking God. It’s my profession.”

He continued: “I’m not justifying it. I’m simply stating the obvious because there’s some people who think — I feel contempt for them. They think they have to tell me how to live my life. And I’m the last person to listen to that, but it doesn’t hurt to occasionally address this. If you’re loser and you’re jealous about somebody else’s work, maybe put that energy into your own. If I had been sitting at home in ’82, ’83, ’84, and instead of writing demos together with Martin and recording demos and putting everything, every last cent we had, everything into musical fanaticism, if I had spent that time instead writing evil mails to people, I would be nowhere. And that’s the difference. If I’d put that energy into destructive things instead of creative things.”

“It was so much fun yesterday to connect with this fantastic audience over these songs, because these songs have a history not just for me, but also for the people who were there. They were singing all the lyrics. They were headbanging to it. What’s wrong with this? I mean, if I’m totally honest, these are songs written, like, 40 years ago, some of them, and I’ve changed, of course, in these decades. I’m not the same guy that I was as a 20-year-old, totally inexperienced Tom Warrior. I’m gonna be 62 in in a couple of months, and I’m a very different person, of course. I’ve lived the life, I have life experience, hopefully some maturity, hopefully. And, of course, it changed me. So if I have a choice, of course TRIPTYKON is much closer to me because TRIPTYKON reflects the current Tom. But that doesn’t preclude me loving these songs for a different reason, because these songs were the stones in my path, the floor plates on that road that I’m walking, and as such they’re hugely important. And especially with the death of Martin, there’s some songs that we performed yesterday where I have a film in my mind how Martin and I created these songs and how we produced them in the studio. And, for example, playing for the very first time ever ‘A Dying God (Coming Into Human Flesh)’ (from CELTIC FROST‘s 2006 album ‘Monotheist’) yesterday on stage, it was first and foremost a tribute to Martin Ain, because I know how important this song was for Martin, and that’s also why the video projection at that point focused on Martin. It’s not about me. Martin can no longer come on stage, and believe me, if he was still alive, we would’ve asked him to be a guest in these shows. But I basically also carry his memory now. I’m involuntarily put into this position. Because I was the old one, I always thought I’m gonna die before him and he’s gonna be the administrator of CELTIC FROST‘s legacy. But now I’m in this position. And this is part of what happened yesterday on stage. And I know people totally understand this. That’s a lot of fans of Martin Ain in the audience, and you can see it.”