TRIUMPH OF DEATH: Evoking Damnation (2024)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

IT WAS 43 years ago, says Thomas Gabriel Fischer, that he embarked on “a teenager’s dream” that has taken him around the world and made him one of the most esteemed figures in extreme metal.

“I didn’t think any of it would come true, but they gave it to me,” he says with a warm smile, in reference to his fans. He keeps coming back to how important his fans are throughout our conversation, always with a sense of quiet awe that so many people have supported his music.

“It’s something that I’ve never been able to quite understand, and something I’m infinitely grateful for. My musical talent is quite limited, and I’m just being honest here!” He laughs with genuine humility. “I really owe it all to the audience, who gave my music a chance and who listen to my music and come to my concerts. I owe them everything.”

Of course, in the beginning it was a very different story. The band he formed then, Hellhammer, were ridiculed, critically reviled and commercially ignored. Even after he and Martin Ain moved on to Celtic Frost a few years later, critics could only talk about how awful they thought Hellhammer had been.

“For a very long time I thought that no one would connect to the music I write. We were in the underground and nobody really liked what we were doing. And it made me think, realistically, that maybe the way my emotions work, I don’t connect to other people’s emotions. There was only a small circle of friends that kept coming to the rehearsal room that liked the music but the larger scene ignored it or tore it apart. I got used to this and I thought, ‘Ok, that’s the way it’s going to be. The way I write music just doesn’t connect to people’.”

Fischer and his bandmates persisted in their dream of being musicians, even in spite of such opposition to what they were doing. There were no thoughts of trying his hand at some other form of art. He chuckles at the suggestion he could have tried painting instead: “Oh I don’t have the talent to be a painter, to be honest!” What kept them going was having nothing else to turn to.

“There wasn’t too many options left,” he says. “I did an apprenticeship to be a toolmaker and machine mechanic, and that’s probably what I would have ended up with, if I wouldn’t have gotten my first record deal. What kept me going is that I had nothing to lose. The main members of Hellhammer – Martin Ain, Steve Warrior and myself – who formed the band, we all had, in our individual ways, a difficult youth at home. Youthful problems, past violence, and so on, and Hellhammer was for us a sanctuary, a world we created far away from these things. So we had a sense of no fear, because we had nothing to lose. If you have nothing in your back, you have nothing to go back to. All that was left was going forward. How could it get worse?”

Hellhammer became a kind of personal haven. It was a place to connect with like-minded souls and unleash their own thoughts and impressions of the world.

“The camaraderie and the shared fanaticism made it feel like we’ve found our own kind of family, and so we continued. Hellhammer wasn’t formed to become world famous. Hellhammer was formed just for us. It was an expression of our frustration with everything, We never thought it would go anywhere. We met and we had a fantastic time together and that was the main thing.”

Perhaps it was that aesthetic that eventually led people to Hellhammer’s music, to uncover it and re-evaluate its worth.

“That’s actually possible, yeah,” Fischer agrees after a thoughtful pause. “I think it was probably obvious that there was a certain fanaticism behind it, and that it was honest. That’s interesting. I’d never even thought of that. That’s very possible, because we were all beginners. We didn’t have much talent, we didn’t have fancy instruments, we didn’t have connections with PR. So that’s pretty much what was left. Maybe that’s what people perceived.”

That wasn’t all. The sheer simplicity of Hellhammer’s battering assault was inspired by the likes of Motörhead and Venom, and much of the then-burgeoning British metal scene which had, intentionally or not, shared much of its aesthetics with punk. Anyone could be part of it.

“I think the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which was a major influence on Hellhammer, was itself informed by the punk movement, where it became obvious that you didn’t have to be able to play like Emerson, Lake and Palmer,” Fischer postulates. “Anybody could go on stage and play punk. If they had the right amount of aggression and they had something to say, they could play punk music. Heavy metal luckily took some inspiration from that, and without that, maybe Hellhammer wouldn’t have taken place, maybe not Venom. It’s a good thing. It allowed many more people to express themselves who maybe would have been too intimidated to do it.”

Simplicity has remained at the core of all of Fischer’s musical endeavours. Partly, he says, it’s “because of my own limitations,” but he also likes to explore sounds and emotions without the need to fall back on effects and over-playing.

“Even if I do a requiem with Celtic Frost or Triptykon,” he says, “I love to simplify music and see how far you can go with very simple means.”

It’s a creative principle that has won him and his music a legion of fans since those early demos. Again, he professes it to be “mind-blowing” when anyone says his music was an influence on them. His music is deeply personal, and he’s touched when it becomes part of other people’s lives.

“I’m humbled by it and I’m honoured by it and I’m grateful for it,” he confesses. “It’s still very much my microcosm. I remember how we wrote these songs and how we rehearsed them, it’s all a very personal thing, but there’s people from the outside who say ‘This song influenced me’, and it blows my mind. Because that’s when it leaves my microcosm and it becomes somebody else’s microcosm. Just like Black Sabbath and Angel Witch influenced me, it’s mind blowing and it’s a huge honour.

“There’s artists I’ve told to their face that I can’t believe this is possible,”Fischer continues, “because they are a million times better than I could ever be. Mikael Åkerfeld of Opeth has become a good friend of mine, and ever since our first meeting he told me that Celtic Frost was an influence on him. ‘Opeth is such accomplished music on such a high level, how could that possibly be? If anything, I’m a disciple of yours!’ It’s difficult for me to accept that this should be real. I know my limitations. I’m a very mediocre guitar player.”

Hellhammer’s influence on the metal scene that came after them is hugely disproportionate to their actual recorded legacy. The band’s official recorded output runs to only three very rare demos, 1984’s Apocalyptic Raids EP and a compilation album from 2008. In all, the band recorded fewer than 30 songs, several of which they re-recorded for subsequent releases. Among those tracks is “Eurynomos”, which inspired the stage name of Mayhem’s Øystein Aarseth, “Messiah”, later covered by both Napalm Death and Sepultura, among others, and “Triumph Of Death”, which evolved over several re-workings into a nine and a half-minute epic. It is that song that lends its name to Fischer’s current touring project performing Hellhammer’s music live, something the original band never got to do.

Bringing those songs to life for a live audience so many years later, without any of the other members, provides mixed blessings for Thomas Fischer.

“It’s a bittersweet experience,” he confides. “Because it’s so much fun to play this music, it’s music that I don’t have to think so much about when I’m performing. It’s really raw, proto-extreme metal, punkish and you go on stage and it’s all about power and heaviness and aggression, and that’s a lot of fun to perform. There’s no credibility attached or artistic goals like there are with Celtic Frost or Triptykon, I just go on stage and enjoy myself. But what I really do really miss when I play these songs is what we just talked about: that sense of belonging to a group of people that no longer exists, in a time that no longer exists. That makes it quite sad at the same time.”

Triumph Of Death is visiting Australia this week. It will be Fischer’s third time in Australia following a long ago tour with Celtic Frost and a more recent trip with Triptykon, a one-off appearance at Hobart’s incredible Dark Mofo event.

“The most amazing experience,” he says of that show. “One of the best festivals we’ve ever played.

“Not every Swiss metal band gets to play Australia,” he points out. With Triumph Of Death, Fischer will have been in three out of the four to have done so. “First and foremost, it’s quite an honour.”

He reiterates how unlikely the idea of performing to Australian crowds was to his 20-year-old self, and once again offers his thanks to the fans for supporting that young man’s dream.

“Playing Australia with Hellhammer’s music is not something we would have ever imagined when we started. People laughed about our music, they didn’t think it was serious. And now many years later it takes me around the globe. It takes me to Australia, and that’s very difficult to comprehend. Yet again, it’s the audiences that make this possible and at the end of the day, I’m eternally grateful for that.”

TRIUMPH OF DEATH – AUSTRALIAN RAIDS MMXXIV

14/8: The Basement, Canberra

15/8: The Factory, Sydney

16/8: The Zoo, Brisbane

17/8: Croxton Hotel, Melbourne

18/8: The Gov, Adelaide