When your
name is Tom Gabriel Fischer, better known as Tom Warrior, every news about an
album or any other activity around you, is really something important for the
metal society. One of extreme metal’s fathers came back this year releasing
this monster of an album “Melana Chasmata”. Mr. Warrior is strictly continuing
the formula which he started alongside Martin Eric Ain in the final years of
Celtic Frost with the unhuman “Monotheist”. He kept the heavy sound, combining
almost every extreme subgenres in music and creates the legacy of Celtic Frost
under the name of Triptykon.
After the release of the incredibly strong debut “Eparistera Daimones” (2010) the questions were simple: is Tom able to keep his music high-qualified? The answer is also quite simple: goddamn yes! The darkness, depressive mood and the heavy music (both literally and figuratively) are marked with a distinguish presence in “Melana Chasmata”. Besides the music the lyrical content is also heavy. The lyrics are circling around topics such as depression, darkness, despair, pain – all of them are inexhaustible source to our world. We have even a song named after the estate Boleskine House, owned by the occultist Aleister Crowley. What’s more mystic and darker than that?
When you listen to this album the changes in the mood are inevitable. As a start let’s take a look at the cover – another beautiful surrealist painting by H. R. Giger, the good old friend of Tom Warrior, who tragically died earlier this year. Even this cover matches with the dark mood and music pretty well. The listener is slowly wrapped in black. Just like in a metal manual.
One can say that in “Melana Chasmata” there is a piece for everyone. Those who like the faster and more aggressive side of Tom’s music (early Hellhammer and Celtic Frost) will find their in songs like the opener “Tree of Suffocating Souls” or in “Breathing”, which have some pretty heavy doom metal riff in the beginning. Despite the speed in these songs, the album’s center is in the slower tempos. Because tracks like “Altar of Deceit”, “Black Snow”, “Demon Pact” are filled with ominous atmosphere and down-tuned riffs in the laws of doom metal.
The nice surprise was the song “Aurorae”. I see it as a crucial moment in the album. With this track the listener travels in some other worlds, dimensions; it sends him to a beautiful, distant gothic castle. This is how I feel when I listen to it. The gothic feel in the whole release is mostly present in this exact song. I also want to mention the return of, like I love to call them, whining vocals of the Tom Warrior, present in “In The Sleep of Death”. With “whining” I mean the clean vocals in the Celtic Frost’s classic “Into The Pandemonium”. Listen to “Mesmerized”, “Caress Into Oblivion”, “Sorrows of The Moon”. “Babylon Fell” from that album and you’ll hear them. What to say about the end? “Waiting” is one beautiful, psychedelic-like, atmospheric track, which closes this beast called “Melana Chasmata” properly and calms it down.
Generally the darkness and despair are strongly included both as a feelings and as a topics. The rest of the band are also giving their best for this release, especially the second guitarist V. Santura, who also provides some of the vocal parts. I highly recommend this release to those who doesn’t like borders and labels in metal music. If you are a suicidal kind of a guy, you’ll like it too. For me this creation, lacking of any optimism and light, is definitely one of the best for this year.
97/100
After the release of the incredibly strong debut “Eparistera Daimones” (2010) the questions were simple: is Tom able to keep his music high-qualified? The answer is also quite simple: goddamn yes! The darkness, depressive mood and the heavy music (both literally and figuratively) are marked with a distinguish presence in “Melana Chasmata”. Besides the music the lyrical content is also heavy. The lyrics are circling around topics such as depression, darkness, despair, pain – all of them are inexhaustible source to our world. We have even a song named after the estate Boleskine House, owned by the occultist Aleister Crowley. What’s more mystic and darker than that?
When you listen to this album the changes in the mood are inevitable. As a start let’s take a look at the cover – another beautiful surrealist painting by H. R. Giger, the good old friend of Tom Warrior, who tragically died earlier this year. Even this cover matches with the dark mood and music pretty well. The listener is slowly wrapped in black. Just like in a metal manual.
One can say that in “Melana Chasmata” there is a piece for everyone. Those who like the faster and more aggressive side of Tom’s music (early Hellhammer and Celtic Frost) will find their in songs like the opener “Tree of Suffocating Souls” or in “Breathing”, which have some pretty heavy doom metal riff in the beginning. Despite the speed in these songs, the album’s center is in the slower tempos. Because tracks like “Altar of Deceit”, “Black Snow”, “Demon Pact” are filled with ominous atmosphere and down-tuned riffs in the laws of doom metal.
The nice surprise was the song “Aurorae”. I see it as a crucial moment in the album. With this track the listener travels in some other worlds, dimensions; it sends him to a beautiful, distant gothic castle. This is how I feel when I listen to it. The gothic feel in the whole release is mostly present in this exact song. I also want to mention the return of, like I love to call them, whining vocals of the Tom Warrior, present in “In The Sleep of Death”. With “whining” I mean the clean vocals in the Celtic Frost’s classic “Into The Pandemonium”. Listen to “Mesmerized”, “Caress Into Oblivion”, “Sorrows of The Moon”. “Babylon Fell” from that album and you’ll hear them. What to say about the end? “Waiting” is one beautiful, psychedelic-like, atmospheric track, which closes this beast called “Melana Chasmata” properly and calms it down.
Generally the darkness and despair are strongly included both as a feelings and as a topics. The rest of the band are also giving their best for this release, especially the second guitarist V. Santura, who also provides some of the vocal parts. I highly recommend this release to those who doesn’t like borders and labels in metal music. If you are a suicidal kind of a guy, you’ll like it too. For me this creation, lacking of any optimism and light, is definitely one of the best for this year.
97/100
