Into the Pandemonium: Sounds from Hell

TRIPTYKON

Eparistera Daimones

Those of you who have quite a while been somehow involved with Heavy Metal, most surely have already heard the name Celtic Frost. An infamous band that almost single-handedly developed what would later be known as "Estreme Metal" (and a larger-than-life list of offspring sub-genres), because, during the 80's, they created a brand-new style of Hevy Metal that would surpass most metalheads' (and people in general) espectatives. (Yeah, we know of Venom, Bathory, Sodom, etc... but you get the point)

"And why are you talking about a 20-odd years old band, that is NOT the one on the review's title?" Well, because Celtic Frost is the band that preceded Triptykon, and from which they took most of their musical ideas. After a weird and long story in which CF released three awesome albums in a row, and the an awful piece of crap (namely, Cold Lake), and then some rather mediocre attempt to redeem themselves, and then the band split-up, and then reunites, and then split-up again, and reunited again, and then released another awesome album (the mighty Monotheist), and then split-up yet AGAIN (ok, that's enough already), the band's "main dude", singer and guitarist Tom G. Warrior, grew really tired of getting owned so badly by bad luck, and decided to reminate CF for good, and started a new band. And well, it's quite obvous this new band is Triptykon.

So, following some of the musical ideas and lyrical concepts explore previously on Monotheist, Tom Warrior started his new project in the best way posible, with Triptykon's debut album, Eàristera Daimones (WTF?). Here we're nt to find anything pretty, or up-lifting, nor über-melodic, but completely the opposite. Apparently, Warrior was quite pissed-off with existence in general, and the music in this album clearly reflects that. The atmosphere in this effort is completely dark and opressive, adding to the extreme musical aggresion during the whole recording (all you need is looking at the cover art to give yourselvesan idea).

As soon as the first track, "Goetia", kicks out off the speaker (or headphones, or whatever), we are hit by a truly massive guitar tone, which might have caused all those terrible earthquakes early this year. But that ain't all: we're also introduced to a bass sound that can be felt down to the spine, and a drums sound that... well... uhm... it just sounds awesome (we're running out of bad analogies). And on top fo it all, Tom Warrior's voice, angrily barking out the lyrics. And so it keeps on. Next track is quite similar, but more somber and slow. Then we get "In Shrouds Decayed", with and atmospheric intro, which slowly takes us back to the fields of aggresion. after a brief interlude, we reach "A Thousand Lies", easily the most aggresive and fast song on the album. Here there's no introductory atmosphere, no chance to breathe, no "pretty solo" stuff. Just pure musical obliteration.

After a couple more tracks, which is the same as getting musically rendered to tiny bits, we find that we lied to you at the beginning of this review. Here we hace "My Pain", a "pretty" song, with relaxing music as a background, some sexy girl vocals... and Tom's "depressed metalhead" voice. After this long-awaited chance to breathe, we come to the culmination, of this debut album, in the shape of "The Prolonging": a massive, 19 minutes monster of a song (the "prolonging" bit was for real), during which all the terrorific musical and atmospherics traits of this band are condensed. A very long and physically heavy track, somewhat repetitive, but with a bit of patience, it becomesa mesterpiece in the genre.

So, there you have it. If you like your metal ridiculously heavy, abrassive, vicious, and intelligently blasphemous, making your familly and neighbours develope chronic headaches and psicological issues, or you simply want the perfect Christmass git for your grandma', don't think about it twice and get this album ASAP. Eparistera Daimones is sure to keep on causing som serious earthquakes in the world of music. "Long live teh methulzzz!!!"

- NIHIL VERUM NISI MORS

- by: Keilvethe