The Inner Sanctum of Thomas Gabriel Fischer
by Mike Baronas

When asked to describe the tumultuous period of his life between the 2000 release of the autobiography Are You Morbid? through to the unparalleled new Celtic Frost epic Monotheist, founding creative maverick Thomas Gabriel (Warrior) Fischer is initially, and uncharacteristically, speechless. “This is really, really difficult. This is very, very personal,” he confides after a few moments, continuing shortly thereafter by admitting, “I don’t want to come across like a whiney asshole, but I’ve had a really difficult life starting in the mid-1990’s, and even though it’s stabilized now, I cannot describe myself as happy. My life has been quite a challenge since the making of the book and it’s reflected in the darkness of this album. It’s not a contrived album. Everything that’s dark about it is unfortunately real.”

Thus began my second conversation with the contemporary Fischer – a focused individual who has wiped the slate clean, determined to put his state of being on the line to ensure that his baby’s luminosity will never dim again. When fellow staffer Mark Fields and I first interviewed Tom and bandmate Martin Ain back in February, we were both taken aback by an almost confrontational nature to the Frost of yore.

Intrigued by his newfound intensity on that day, I needed to learn more. Below is what transpired 25 days prior to the start of their European festival shows...

GASPetc:  As cathartic as Monotheist was for you to create, it doesn’t appear to have solved your woes.

Fischer:  If there’s anything happy in my life, it’s this album. I’m very proud of it. It’s probably the most honest album that we’ve done, and in being so, it has had a huge impact on my personal life. You know our past albums, and very often we came close but were never able to do an album 100% the way we wanted due to outside influences like record companies. This album has been made the way we wanted it. It’s a monolithic block of power in my life and has filled me with such a sense of accomplishment.

GASPetc:  The great reviews the album has been receiving has to be satisfying as well.

Fischer:  Yes and no. It’s fantastic to see that people actually understand what we’ve done on this album. In Germany, of course, they completely miss it as they have with every Celtic Frost album. They say it’s an uninspired album and there’s not enough death metal and all this bullshit.

What was important happened long before the reviews. Martin and I walked out of the studio after 4½ years with a sense of finally having done an album we wanted to do. That is so much more important than any feature, than any photo of us in any magazine, than any review or anything. This is something we’ve always wanted to do, even in the `80’s. When we came back together in 2000/2001, we had a common vision in our minds and have actually been able to fulfill this and not be pressed by a record company to sound like Exodus or Slayer.

To have the guts to stay in the studio as long as it takes to create a Celtic Frost album is of such importance to us as artists and musicians. Even if the whole world hated this album, I really don’t care because I love it. It’s the album we wanted and needed to do.

GASPetc:  What trials-by-fire did you and Martin have to endure after Vanity/Nemesis to become the brothers that you are today?

Fischer:  I think we’ve always been brothers from the moment we met. But as brothers, we’ve had extreme ups and downs because we’re such extreme characters, so maybe ours is a little more pronounced than the usual relationship. I think our separation was a part of us being brothers. We spent our teenage years together then went into the world and did our own thing.

During the tour for Vanity/Nemesis I was so endlessly happy that Martin had come back into the band, and yet there was something wrong. I could tell Martin felt totally out of place. He didn’t feel at ease about himself or the band, and that’s why he hardly participated. That’s why Vanity/Nemesis to me is not a classic Celtic Frost album. He was still somebody who had to find himself and who was dealing with a lot of personal issues. He was still dealing with the aftermath of Pandemonium and I was dealing with the same thing in my own way with Cold Lake, and for both of us, it was disastrous. It turned out that that I could not work with Martin and he could not work in the music industry at that time. He tried, but it was just impossible for him.

So when we came back to work with each other in 2000/2001, we found people who had actually put all of this behind us and who had matured a great deal and who had dealt with this huge backlog – our life story – which is Celtic Frost. Which, even if you live like a recluse like me, you can’t escape it entirely. And that changed us quite a lot and we went to great pains not to repeat certain things that had taken place in the old days.

However, it was not easy because, as I said before, we are quite unique characters and working together was quite explosive at times, and, at one point, he even threatened the whole project after 2½ years. We had already recorded so much of the album and we really knew what the album was going to be like, and there was just a period of 2 months that communications between Martin and I completely broke down. But it goes to show that our personal relationship is so strong that we actually worked it out and we both agree that we came out of this much stronger. Our relationship is much, much stronger now.

GASPetc:  May I ask how influential your wife Michelle was to Celtic Frost after Into the Pandemonium?

Fischer:  Hardly at all. I’ve read a million rumors about the supposed influence of Michelle on Celtic Frost, but I believe certain things that happened to Celtic Frost were entirely up to me. Michelle was there and she supported me uncompromisingly in everything I did, but all the mistakes were entirely mine. Later on Michelle even said she regretted that she supported whatever crazy ideas I had and that she should’ve been much more vigilant because she disagreed with certain things, but she was just the woman by my side and supported me. She probably could’ve had a very much more positive influence on Celtic Frost if she actually would’ve disagreed with me.

GASPetc:  But that’s obviously a difficult position to question the mastermind behind the band.

Fischer:  You have to understand that I met Michelle when she was 17 and we married when she was 18. Of course, I was this guy who toured all over the world and she probably didn’t care to speak her mind right from the beginning. It would’ve been quite difficult for her to find her self-confidence surrounded by a whole bunch of rock musicians, managers, and the record industry and she’s this teenage girl from Texas who never left America before. So, due to this, she had limited influence to begin with.

She did back up all my ideas, and as we all know now, my ideas weren’t always the greatest ones.

GASPetc:  I take it you’re no longer together.

Fischer:  We separated in 2000 and the divorce became final in 2004.

GASPetc:  And I’m sure this is one of the biggest contributing factors to your current state of mind.

Fischer:  Oh yeah! She was the love of my life and losing that marriage was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever gone through. It was a very prolonged, very dark, very difficult situation and I tried to prevent it for far too long. She needed to change and she didn’t, so it was a struggle in vain for me for many years. I confronted her with things in her life that she didn’t want to deal with and she never forgave me for that.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Michelle because we were an absolutely unique couple, and I wouldn’t have married that woman if she hadn’t been the love of my life. We were together for 16 years. Our marriage was so intense and so fantastic in the beginning and later it was so drastically painful that no matter how you turn it, it’s something that is hard to forget even if you move on. So, of course, she will always be part of my life, whether I want her to be or not.

But as a part of your life – like the great Celtic Frost albums, like Cold Lake – these things are in the past and you move on and, of course, I look toward the future. I live very much in the now, but all these things have left a mark on my life in one way or another. With Michelle, love was involved which makes the mark even deeper.

GASPetc:  What frightens you Tom?

Fischer:  Honesty, nothing. I would’ve given you a totally different answer a few years ago, but there was a point when I realized I have left all of this behind me and whatever happens, happens. I’m willing to accept it, which makes me rather calm. I’ve lived through such dramatic events in my life, especially the past 5 years or so, that whatever comes along can’t scare me anymore. The worst case to me almost seems like a release or a beautiful escape, so what should scare me?

GASPetc:  How do you view your own mortality and do you believe in any form of an afterlife?

Fischer:  No, I don't believe in any afterlife. That doesn't make life and the universe in which we exist any less of a miracle. Mortality, including my own, is a necessity and something logical and beautiful.

GASPetc:  What role does religion play in your life now?

Fischer:  None whatsoever. I loathe religion. I believe all religion is man-made and pathetic. If anything, my hatred toward religion is reflected on the album. I didn’t have a rebirth or second coming or whatever [laughs].

GASPetc:  Do Martin & Franco [Sesa, drums] share similar religious beliefs?

Fischer:  Oh yes. Martin is a huge student of religion, but not a follower of it.

GASPetc:  Speaking of Franco, how did you find him?

Fischer:  He was a friend of Martin’s. We initially didn’t even think of using him. He was quite well known in the local scene because he played in a number of stoner rock bands, which was relatively close to our playing style. He was quite notorious, and still is, for his personality, which led Martin and me to believe he would fit right in with us [laughs].

Traditionally, those in Celtic Frost have been from widely varying backgrounds. It’s a lot different nowadays. I know this leads to a lot of arguments and a lot of hard discussions, but at the same time that’s the strength of Celtic Frost which makes the band such a bulldozer in sound, in approach, in everything. But there’s always a price to it. Not a week goes by when there’s not some friction. I used to trick myself into thinking that Celtic Frost was only good when there was harmony in the band. Now I’ve figured out that it’s the friction that powers us.

GASPetc:  How do you feel Franco compares to Reed [St. Mark, former drummer]?

Fischer:  They’re completely different drummers. They have a lot of things in common too, but their approach is very, very different. Reed is an excellent drummer, but so is Franco. They just play a different style. They’re both fantastic drummers.

GASPetc:  So he’s adapting to the older material with no problems?

Fischer:  He’s been rehearsing the older material for a lot longer than we have. He started right after the recording of the album, because he wanted to live up to Reed’s name. He knew all the fans would investigate him with a microscope. He wanted to do the material justice. He’s still working on developing a combination of Reed’s very classic patterns with some of his own stuff and blending it into what he defines on the new material.

GASPetc: Will he be a collector of high-heeled shoes as well?

Fischer: [laughs] I can’t believe that actually worked in Celtic Frost, but, for some reason, the fans accepted it. It still puzzles me as to why.

GASPetc: Well, apparently, as you wrote in Are You Morbid?, groupies played a significant part of the band’s life on the road. Shoes aside, I wouldn’t necessarily have pegged Celtic Frost as a ladies band?

Fischer: I think any band touring internationally is a ladies band. That how the industry is, like it or not. But these same mechanics have been around since the dawn of humanity when we crawled out of the caves, I suppose. When the lead hunter came back to the cave with the biggest prey, I’m quite sure all of the women in the tribe would go to him and idolize him. Pathetic as it is, the same carnal mechanics still work nowadays. It’s human. It’s not just us. It’s not just heavy metal. If the manager of a bank buys a sportscar, he’ll have a better chance at the bar.

GASPetc: Will groupies play as prevalent a role in this upcoming tour?

Fischer: I’ll tell you afterwards [laughs]. But, quite frankly, I’d much I’d much rather have one woman in my life than dealing with groupies.

GASPetc: Understandable. So, what are your feelings about embarking on such an extensive tour?

Fischer: Honestly, I don’t have any right now. There’s so much stuff going on and we’re practicing constantly. There’s so much to rehearse. We’re so underrehearsed right now that I haven’t even thought about it. At this point, I have no emotions about it. I haven’t dealt with that, so I have no idea. I probably won’t until I step out onstage for the first time as Celtic Frost in 16 years.

GASPetc: Have you found a proper touring guitarist as of yet?

Fischer: I believe so, but it’s too early to make any big announcement. We’ve only had limited time together, but it seems fantastic. He sounds better than any other guitar player we’ve played with. All I can say is that he’s a Norwegian [ed. note: it has since been announced that former Cadaver guitarist Anders Odden will be filling the bill] which kind of closes the circle.

GASPetc: It seems more and more bands these days just keep the creative nucleus together while adding hired guns for touring purposes.

Fischer: Or they’re sick and tired of all the big-mouthed freeloaders who just want to join the band because your famous and really don’t live the band. They’re not part of the family. They don’t understand the music and think they can fake it. Half the guitar players we saw just came because we had a name. It’s not so hard to play Celtic Frost’s material and it’s glaringly obvious if they don’t actually live it. And I think the same experience has happened to a lot of bands and they just get sick and tired of that.

GASPetc: It doesn’t appear as if you’re the easiest person to work for either.

Fischer: [laughs!] Possibly not. I’m just very determined. With Celtic Frost, we don’t know any leeway. You have to sound like Celtic Frost and you have to do it the Celtic Frost way. I’ve been too lenient with people in the past and have made mistakes that way, like with Cold Lake. And that’s not gonna happen again. This band is established. This band has a name and a sound and I just have zero tolerance for anybody who wants to fuck with that.

On the other hand, we have a lot of fun too. We have a lot of discussions and everything, but we’re a band and we know how to have good time. It’s fun to play with Celtic Frost, as long as you’re professional.

GASPetc: Any plans of documenting the rebirth of Celtic Frost with a possible DVD release?

Fischer: So far, nothing’s been planned. It would be interesting in a way, but how many behind-the-scenes or live DVDs can you take? They’re all the same. We were talking about doing a live DVD, but we want to do it completely different. We’d probably do it after the tour. We have some ideas of doing a very unusual live show. We’d like to do something special there too like Celtic Frost does with everything.

By now, everybody knows what goes on backstage – how bands party, how bands fart, how bands drink, how bands throw up – how interesting is that?

GASPetc: They would already know if they’ve read your book, but how many metalheads actually read?

Fischer: [laughs!]