In a recent conversation with PowerOfMetal.cl, Tom Gabriel Fischer — known as Tom Gabriel Warrior, the visionary behind Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and now Triptykon — reflected on his upcoming December 2025 performance at Chile Terrorfest. There, he will present the legacy of Hellhammer with his project Triumph of Death, while also revisiting Celtic Frost’s catalog with Triptykon.
When asked whether he had ever thought about going beyond performing old material and possibly reviving one of his former bands with new music, Fischer explained (via Blabbermouth): "Well, in the case of Celtic Frost, we are doing this with Triptykon. Triptykon is basically a continuation of Celtic Frost without some of the personal problems that we had. But even on the next Triptykon album, there's gonna be some music that I wrote when I was still in Celtic Frost, and there's also new music that's very much just my music, the way I write it and the way I would've written it, even if Celtic Frost still existed."
"As far as Hellhammer and Triumph of Death is concerned, there's, of course, only two years' worth of Hellhammer music; Hellhammer only existed for two years. And yeah, we have been talking about maybe trying to write some music in the Hellhammer style, but I'm very careful about this. I don't wanna do something wrong. To me, Hellhammer is something very important by now in my life. And if you ever do this, we will be very, very careful to do it the right way. And if it doesn't feel right, we're not gonna release it. And we don't have to do it, so there's no pressure. We can do it only if it's right," he continued.
Fischer also shared what led him to finally embrace performing his early material again. He pointed back to the early 2000s: "For Martin [Eric Ain, late Hellhammer and Celtic Frost bassist] and me, the turning point was when we reunited Celtic Frost in 2001. Talking about the old days, and it was not just in a nostalgic manner, we really tried to revisit the reasons why we formed Hellhammer, why we formed Celtic Frost and so on, and talking about this, of course, made us listen to the old music and made us understand it maybe a little more deeply than we could when we were young."
"When we were young, we were full of adrenaline and full of testosterone, and we were just thinking in the now, but when we reformed Celtic Frost, we were older, we were hopefully a little more mature. We were adult men. We listened to this music and we said, 'Wow, some of this music actually has aged quite well.'"
"And we actually began playing some Hellhammer songs during the rehearsals for [Celtic Frost’s] Monotheist album [in 2006]. We had the intention of playing some Hellhammer songs on the Monotheist tour. The reason why we didn't do this in the end was that the drummer we had at the time really didn't click with this music. We tried to play these songs in the rehearsal room, and they just never sounded right with the drummer we had," he added.
But then I did the book about Hellhammer — around 2010, I wrote the book Only Death Is Real with just the Hellhammer history — and this really inspired me to try it again, but to try it with a band specifically formed for that. So I formed Triumph of Death with some very good friends of mine who I know understand the music of Hellhammer. And that's when it happened."
