Tom Gabriel Warrior

Ian Christie

The founder in 1984 of Celtic Frost and in 2008 of Triptykon. Also the author of Only Death is Real: An Illustrated History of Hellhammer and Celtic Frost and in general a fascinating renaissance man of many talents and especially many interests, which we’ll get into over the next several hours.

We have to do everything long form in the world of Tom Gabriel Warrior. I’m Ian Christie. I wrote a book called Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal and I’m also the very fortunate publisher of Tom’s book, Only Death is Real. I guess we’ll set the tone with a song that was recently released on 7" by a band called Hellhammer from about ten miles away from here in the outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland. This is a song called “Blood Insanity.”

(music: Hellhammer – “Blood Insanity” / applause)

“Blood Insanity” by Hellhammer. I applaud you for your intestinal fortitude. The heavy metal audiences of 1982/83 were not entirely prepared for this uprising, this explosion from Zurich, from the environs of Zurich, Switzerland, but this is the story. This is where the story begins. For Tom Gabriel Warrior, I’m going to say the essential living... OK, fine. You’re going to have to say it yourself. Somewhere along the line black metal, death metal, extreme forms of metal go back to this bunker under a kindergarten a few miles away from where we sit today.

Tom, over the years you and I have had the chance to meet several times and had very many long engaging conversations. Something that I have never managed to work into a book or anything. It doesn’t appear in your Only Death is Real book. A very profound thing that you said to me once about the decisions that have guided your life through Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and now Triptykon, that this path that you’re on you didn’t choose it. It didn’t exist but you didn’t choose this path. It chose you. You didn’t set out to be making the harshest most grotesque possible sounds. It was the option that you saw. That was the door that was opened.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Excuse my voice. I have a cold and I was singing with it. Given the realities of my life at the time, of course there was no other option for me. It reflected my daily existence. It wasn’t an intentional choice of course. My choice would have been the happy world, me fitting in with everybody in school, but it wasn’t really my choice. My surroundings decided for me. This was basically all that was left for me. It was a place that nobody else wanted to go and that was all that was left for me. All the other places I wasn’t allowed into. Over the years I made it my own.

Ian Christie

Certainly the world today of all extreme metal, and black metal, death metal, even the mainstream is profoundly effected by those early moments. There are maybe even a couple people here in the room, because we are in your home city, who saw Hellhammer perform. To me it’s a very special little cloud or zone that you created for yourself. Very few friends gathered together to form many friends. The stragglers from each village traveling by train, bicycle, moped, however it happened. Can you describe what was the Hellhammer reality?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Hellhammer was a personal sanctuary. It wasn’t designed to be a well-known band or a band with a lot of fans. It was just our little haven. We all had difficulties of our own personal sort in our lives and by coincidence we formed this band because we were passionate about that kind of music, but it was a very personal thing.

We were of the opinion that nobody would ever listen to Hellhammer. Everybody laughed about us anyway. There was no extreme metal scene. Hellhammer was just our personal little project. Our personal little world to keep the other world that hated us and we hated it, to keep that away. The more radical we became, the more we achieved that effect.

Nobody wanted to touch us. Nobody wanted to listen to us. Nobody wanted to do a concert with us. In a way that was painful, but in a way we also enjoyed it. We wanted to be our own circle. We did not feel we understood the rest of the world and the rest of the world probably didn’t understand us, so it was like a sanctuary of a handful of friends who felt the same for one reason or another.

Ian Christie

Although maybe you didn’t feel like you had a place in the broader world, you had all the elements that Iron Maiden had in 1982. They were just scaled down to a friend with a little piece of plywood with a lighting rig on it.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Also we could not play. [laughs] This is a minor detail.

Ian Christie

You looked great.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

A minor detail that might be of importance.

Ian Christie

You had stage gear and you had a backdrop.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Yeah, we had everything else. [laughs] No, seriously. Part of the people involved in Hellhammer came from the punk scene and that’s no coincidence. I myself was at the very beginning… We really couldn’t play. We didn’t look for that either. It was about extremity. All of us had been looking for ever heavier music and the pinnacle of that was Motörhead, Venom, Discharge. We wanted to be part of that. In that kind of music you didn’t have to play excellently. It was something different that mattered. It was a passion. It was something that was burning inside of you and burning beyond description. That’s what we had. We couldn’t play, but we had that passion. It was very honest and it was honest because it wasn’t geared to success. It was just a very personal expression. That’s why it was totally honest.

Ian Christie

For instance, when it came time to produce something that people could listen to at home around the world, you were aware of this demo trading scene, which is probably not something we have the time to fully detail right here, but a worldwide network of people experiencing bands like Venom and the new wave of British heavy metal bands and then Metallica and the American bands. Your very first outing was not three songs, right? You went full boar.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

The thing is because nobody took it serious and we were of course diehard music lovers. We were dreaming of having an album even though that was far beyond our reach, technically, but we wanted to have an album like everybody else. We had no illusions. We knew nobody was ever going to give us a record deal, so we said, “Let’s do a demo. Make our own album on a cassette.”

At that time it was of course impossible as a private citizen to have an album, unlike today. We tricked some poor sound engineer into recording 200 songs or something. We wanted to have our album. We basically were convinced this was all we would ever do. This cassette that would later become The Triumph Of Death demo. We were convinced that was the pinnacle of Hellhammer. Nobody showed an interest. Quite on the contrary.

We were just happy to have this music at home to listen to it. Reflecting the one and a half years or so of work that we have put into it. We were not under the illusion that this was going to lead somewhere. We were also very self-critical. We had no self-confidence at the time. We were beginners, we were very young, and we knew it was extremely unperfect, especially for that time. There was singers like Ronnie James Dio or whatever. We knew we could never reach something like that. We just wanted to have our music on a tape.

Ian Christie

At the same time you were producing newsletters and constantly redesigning artwork, band logos, and I’m assuming consuming metal.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

It was our passion.

Ian Christie

Consuming hard rock voraciously.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

It was our passion. It was our life. As I said earlier, we couldn’t fit into anywhere and so we created our own little world that we understood and of course we gave all our time to it. We took it very serious, but we knew of course it was an underground niche. The myth that Hellhammer is nowadays has nothing to do with what it actually was. It was a sanctuary for us and that was really it.

Ian Christie

It’s really remarkable compared to bands I would say in hard rock and in punk rock you have The Stooges, who were floating around lost in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but somebody like The Ramones they had management. They were in a media capital. Even The Ramones they were practically Liberace compared to what Hellhammer...

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Well, where was I going to find a manager in Nürensdorf? Even in Zurich, we’re talking about 1982 or something. There was barely a music scene to speak of in Switzerland. There was a handful of venues. There wasn’t really a scene specifically not for heavier music. For extreme music. There was a few punk bands that were quite fantastic, but that’s the end of the scene. The managers we had here was for major commercial music. If I would have come with that little Hellhammer tape, I wouldn’t have even gotten into the door. We didn’t even consider that, there was simply no chance. It wasn’t like today where you can Google “extreme metal management.”

Ian Christie

Right. Go to YouTube and getting singing tips.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

We formed Prowling Death Management, which was the same people who were the band. There you go. By now of course Prowling Death Records is a real record company in London, but back then it was formed in my childhood bedroom. Proudly put on our fliers when it was really the same guys.

Ian Christie

The first hurdle that Hellhammer overcame, that you overcame, in your long career I think would have sent 99.99% of all people crying back to find another interest. To take up tennis or something. You sent the demo out and the reviews came in. How were the reviews for the Hellhammer demos?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Well, the people who actually bothered to write back hated it. That’s the truth. First of all, we sat at home going through our record collection writing down the addresses on the back of our favorite metal albums. Then we sent the demos there. Most of the people didn’t waste the stamp on it to reply. Those who did said, “No thanks. There’s no way.” There was only one record company in America, Metal Boy Records, who said, “We see some kind of promise. If you do a better demo, maybe.” There was one Swiss record company at the time.

Ian Christie

That was enough, right? A tiny pinpoint of light.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

That’s better than nothing. There was a Swiss record company actually here on this street, Langstrasse, called Disc Trade. They wrote back that we should go practice. That we were miserable and that we should go practice and there was no chance. The reactions weren’t really encouraging.

Ian Christie

At least you had the heavy metal press to turn back on, right? They were encouraging. Metal Forces. Wait a minute. There was a lot of negativity thrown that way, but...

Tom Gabriel Warrior

The thing is we realized relatively early on that the more radical the negative reactions were, the more interested people became. That’s probably an effect of the punk wave because punk opened the doors to anybody. For the normal consumer the punks couldn’t really play. Having journalists writing that we cannot play and that we’re really extreme, but it’s shit. A certain fraction of the people who read that became interested because it sounded like some of the punk bands. Even though that wasn’t the intention, it got us a lot of attention. We got letters from all over the world and who wanted to buy our demo and so on, and so on. That was the beginning of at least something.

Ian Christie

With broader exposure… Congratulations on persevering through some hellaciously negative reviews at the time.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

What else was I supposed to do? There was nothing else.

Ian Christie

Go work for the train company?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

It was too late by that time. I was going to become an aircraft mechanic, but by that time, no.

Ian Christie

Once again, this wasn’t a path. You didn’t have a choice. You were already on the path and that’s what it was.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

By the time we did the second Hellhammer demo, I was giving up my apprenticeship, yeah.

Ian Christie

With your first trip as a band out of Switzerland to Berlin to record the Apocalyptic Raids EP, I think everything changed. It seems that that’s when you realized what the next level of possibility was. Can you talk about the realization that Hellhammer was moribund and something new would have to be launched? Something new meaning Celtic Frost.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

The recording of the Hellhammer EP was a wake-up call. [coughs] Sorry. We felt the limits of what we were able to do. We realized we had to improve massively. The record company told us that. The press told us that. We knew it ourselves. Being in a studio with a real producer and being exposed to that environment was an utter wake-up call. There was no way around it. At least at the time.

Ian Christie

It was inspiring to be in a place where they had producers who knew somewhat what to do with you.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I would say intimidating. Well, it was inspiring of course, but as I said we knew the vehicle of Hellhammer had reached a limit. We wanted to do more than just that.

Ian Christie

With Celtic Frost, almost immediately you then became an international touring band. You were part of the thrash metal wave. You came through the same record labels as Slayer, Metallica, countless bands.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

You’re skipping.

Ian Christie

I’m skipping a lot, but I don’t want to force you to re-read your Only Death Is Real book basically.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

You could have just brought it.

Ian Christie

I do have it. Yeah. It does not fit in a pocket. Very quickly you were on tour in the United States. You were meeting your contemporaries from Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I’m curious, after being isolated in your musical infancy in Zurich, who did you feel comradeship and kinship with when you came out into the world? Or was it still Celtic Frost as isolated?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

That’s actually a very difficult question. It was probably bands we didn’t meet like Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus, things like that. I’m really sorry about my voice going away. I’ve been dealing with a heavy cold for a few days and I have to practice like this. This is the result. I hope you can finish this thing. We’ll see. I sound like Lemmy. [laughs]

Ian Christie

Yeah, the whisky, please?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

That would probably help.

Ian Christie

You’re talking about bands that at the time I think wouldn’t have given respect to heavy metal to even tour with the heavy metal bands. Sisters of Mercy.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

We tried many times. We tried, but it was impossible at the time. Yeah.

Ian Christie

I wanted to know, this is a little bit of a tangent, but it’s a very important one. Heavy metal 30 years later is I would say very respected and almost fetishized and all of a sudden has many doorways open that weren’t open back in 1985. Has the world changed, did everybody finally understands Hellhammer? Not just Hellhammer specifically, but this extreme, forceful, heavy way of thinking. Has the world changed and all of a sudden everybody gets it or is there a misunderstanding about the fundamental elements that create good heavy metal?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

The world has changed massively. What was extreme yesterday is no longer extreme. That has helped Hellhammer of course.

Ian Christie

Jumping into this era of Celtic Frost touring internationally, releasing incredibly influential records. Morbid Tales, To Mega Therion. Then giving full flight to your metal avant-garde tendencies, but really a wide musical palette on Into the Pandemonium. I’m curious. What were some key moments of validation once the negativity and passion weren’t the sole engines?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

That’s a good question. I think merely recording Morbid Tales was an enormous validation. Any of the first three albums anyway.

Ian Christie

The dissolution of Celtic Frost over a couple of years in the early 1990s led to your band Apollyon Sun.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

You’re skipping a lot of years.

Ian Christie

I’m skipping a lot of years, but it’s getting us to a few word from you about Triptykon. During the 1990s, you attempted to take the heaviness from guitar music into electronic music with the band Triptykon where things are composed in a different way. The subsonic frequency potential is completely different because you’re dealing with synthesizers and samplers that don’t have the same physical limitations as acoustic instruments.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

You’re talking about Apollyon Sun?

Ian Christie

Apollyon Sun. Without even getting into the crucial years of the Celtic Frost reunion, when you formed your current band, Triptykon, you were now drawing from the experience of Hellhammer being a universally, worldwide, influential key band. As important to extreme metal as Black Sabbath is to heavy metal.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

You’ve got to stop this.

Ian Christie

I’m telling it like it is.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

It’s bullshit. [laughs]

Ian Christie

Your experiences with Celtic Frost to actually physically moving into successfully making that heavy music and then the lesser known, but also...

Tom Gabriel Warrior

It was the whiskey.

Ian Christie

The vapors are getting to me, man. You had a vast palette to draw from by the time you formed Triptykon about ten years ago in 2008.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Triptykon was simply an escape from the realities of Celtic Frost. I wanted to do music, but not the personality clashes. That’s really all there is to it.

Ian Christie

Is it an advantage having younger musicians?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I don’t care. As long as they are on a reasonable personal level, I don’t care. Age, gender, I don’t care.

Ian Christie

How did making electronic music in the 1990s adjust the way that you wrote songs?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

More than I could explain it right now. [laughs] It was crucially important. Absolutely.

Ian Christie

You’ve almost eclipsed… Celtic Frost was never able to tour with Sisters of Mercy, but now you’re making music that surpasses what Sisters of Mercy were. They were a rock band with dark atmospheric elements. Triptykon is a very heavy metal band exploring the same territory in a much more extreme way.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

We never made the distinction. For us, music was music. I didn’t give a shit if it was punk, new wave, metal, classical, jazz. I didn’t want to be confined. For me, Sisters of Mercy is the same thing as Deep Purple.

Ian Christie

This has been clear. You’ve referenced these influences. I know that you listen to singer/songwriters. We’re effected by the loss of Leonard Cohen just today. As much as completely unknown British heavy metal bands from 1979 like A to Z.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Yes.

Ian Christie

In recent years you’ve become more outspoken about your vegetarianism and about animal rights. It’s something that I wanted to bring up today because I remember a few years ago...

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Because I can’t say anything about it!

Ian Christie

I could basically say anything right now… Your love of strip mining and poisoning the earth, right? Oil spills. I think it’s something important enough to you.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

It’s extremely important and it should be important to everybody. There’s no excuse for the way we’re treating our planet and our fellow living beings on this planet. There’s absolutely no excuse. It’s a concern of everybody, even if they ignore it.

Ian Christie

I recall I think there was a German webzine, Voices From The Dark Side or something, maybe it was the first to contact you and ask you about this. This is the first time that I knew about your consciousness in this area. Now you are very outspoken about it.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

No, I’m not a missionary. I don’t tell people what to do. I live the life that I live. If somebody asks me, I will answer about I’m not a missionary. I hate that shit. I hate people telling me what to do so I don’t tell other people what to do. I have a brain and I would hope that other people have one too.

Ian Christie

Sometimes people share one brain. Large groups of people.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Yes, a lot of people.

Ian Christie

And it’s very worn out. You describe yourself as a musical purist. This can mean anything like a lack of interest in seeing Black Sabbath without Bill Ward.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

How did you know?

Ian Christie

Well, I know there are way more precise ways that this manifests itself. What is a musical purist?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

How am I supposed to know that? Look, I live my life. I have my opinions, but I don’t know what a musical purist is. I have no idea.

Ian Christie

A fundamentalist.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I know, but who am I to set the rules? I don’t know anything. I’m just a kid from a Swiss farm town who was really desperate and found a sanctuary in music. That’s fantastic, but that’s really all there is too at the same time. I’ve been very fortunate and I’ve been fortunate for people like this. [points to audience] I couldn’t have done anything without the people to listen to my music. Without these people, Tom Warrior would not exist.

There was a time nobody gave a shit about my music and then these people came along and actually gave a shit and that’s why we’re sitting here. There’s very little inside of me that has caused this. It’s the grace of the people who gave our music a chance and as we talked about earlier I can remember very well the time where nobody gave my music a chance. I’m the last person to know why this has changed. I feel extremely fortunate that it did change, but it’s not something I did. I was just a kid who was beaten up every day in school. Who was a complete outcast. Who was not taken seriously and when I made my music it continued like that. I was beaten up in a different way. Then for some reason the music became accepted. I don’t know why. I’m still playing the same music. I actually think Triptykon is far closer to Hellhammer than Celtic Frost was at certain periods. Why this is sometimes a miracle to me too. My personal opinions about animal rights and everything, I’m not Britney Spears or anything like that. I sometimes feel embarrassed when people ask me about that. I’m not one of those fake politicians who tell you what to do.

I’m not somebody who puts my head in the sand. I inform myself what’s going on with this planet. What’s going on, how we treat animals, how we treat the environment, and I cannot consciously support that, but that’s just me. Apparently most other people can. I can’t but I’m not a missionary. I’m not in the church. I don’t tell you what to think. I also think as a musician you should be careful with political statements. Lifestyle statements. I’m just a fucking musician. Who am I to tell people what to do? I know it’s normal in Hollywood, but not for me. If somebody asks me, I will explain myself, but I’m not a lifestyle guru. I can only hope that if I say something in an interview that people will think about it. Not that they might not kill an animal to have it on their table, but that’s really the extent of what I should say and what I can say. At the end of the day I was just the singer of Hellhammer and what does that mean in this world? Nothing.

Ian Christie

Thank you.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

[Tom is given a drink] No, it’s fine. Well, you’re much nicer than my ex-wife. [laughs]

Ian Christie

Now tea has materialized. This goes into the visual side of what you’ve always done. There have been occult trappings and a lot of fascination with darkness. I think that in the world of extreme music there’s not… The animal rights question that I asked was interesting because it’s an actual real world clue to your morality.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Look Ian. I feel extremely passionate about that. Extremely passionate. I could fucking torture to death any human being who harms an animal, but that’s just me. I know for millennia it’s been normal for people to kill animals, so who’s Tom Warrior from Nürensdorf to tell people to change? I just think we came pretty late in the history of the earth. These beings have been around here for much longer than us and we come here and we enslave everything just for our egotistical needs. We destroy the environment. We destroy our fellow beings just so we are happy. I’ve been a meat eater too when I was younger, but one day something set something in motion and when you think about it, it’s not sustainable. Not for my conscience. I want to be able to look into the mirror at the end of the day. I enjoyed meat. I enjoyed the taste of meat, but I don’t enjoy pain, and suffering and torture. We don’t even kill these animals with compassion. We kill them brutally and in a stressful environment as many animals as possible per day for profit and whatever. I cannot be a part of this, but this is me. I have no right to tell these people what to do, nor do I want to tell them what to do. All I can think is, “Maybe they’ll think of this eventually too like I did.”

As I said earlier, as a musician, what right do I have to tell people what kind of lifestyle choice? If I have any competence, it’s extreme music. I hate the politicians interfering with my life, so who is Tom Warrior to tell people what to do?

Ian Christie

Another area you’ve shown competence in is the visual aspects of music packaging.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

That’s a nice way to skirt the issue.

Ian Christie

No. I think you’ve sealed that issue with a strong period. I have nothing to add. Your vision for Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and now Triptykon has always included a strong visual component. You mentioned previously the lack of music industry infrastructure in Switzerland but you did benefit from having a countryman, Hans Rudy Giger, who also had followed his own individualistic path to create his own completely vast and incredible visual universe and creating many universes. You’ve had the great fortune of having your paths intertwine since Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion album. You’ve worked with the man for many years up until his untimely passing.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Well Giger was one of the few people to actually take us serious. To our utter astonishment, he actually noticed Hellhammer. He listened to Hellhammer and he told me at least that he could see some parallels in his astonishing work to Hellhammer’s minute little work. I think maybe this was because Giger for a very long time was also shunned and laughed at, and was pushed to be underground in Switzerland. In fact, he was pushed into the underground until the very end. The leading art museum in the city will not show Giger to this very day. For them he’s just some kind of idiot who paints penises in black. When for the rest of the world he’s a genius artist. I think Giger could relate most of all because he was also an outcast.

At the time when we contacted him we didn’t even have a record deal. We were nobodies and he was really the only person in Switzerland at the time, the only person that mattered, who took it serious. I can only attribute that to the fact that he was also an underground artist and not taken serious. We talked about that many years later and he confirmed that.

Ian Christie

When was your first meeting with him? In the flesh, initially it was corresponding through the post.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

The initial meetings all took place by phone and by letters. There was quite a number of letters sent back and forth. I have all those letters still. The meeting only took place in the 2000s. We actually once met him before, but we didn’t make ourselves known. We felt such respect for him we didn’t want to disturb him. The actual real first meeting only took place in the 2000s. Before that it was just on the phone and by letters and everything. It was extensive, but not in the flesh. We were so grateful we didn’t want to bother him, believe it or not.

Ian Christie

We talked about the Hellhammer bunker and the small world that you as a band created with sound, and music and kinship. You became part of the inner world of Giger and his wife at their home with all kinds of things going on. What kind of a role did you play and do you continue to play actually?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I’m still part of the Giger estate. What it’s called now, the Giger Workshop, which of course still exists. His art still exists. His museum still exist. His exhibitions still exist. And I’m very fortunate to still be a part of that, which to me is an honor beyond description. There again is something that as a teenager looking at Giger’s books and Giger’s posters I never thought it would happen just like with Hellhammer.

It’s a huge honor and I try whatever I can to contribute to Giger’s work. I was fortunate enough to be invited to be the curator of the Giger photo exhibition that’s taking place right now at his museum. I really don’t know why this honor was bestowed upon me. I told Giger many times over the years how much he meant to me and he didn’t want to hear it. He was a very modest person. Every time I tried to tell him what he meant to me and to Celtic Frost, he ran out of the room. He didn’t want to hear it. It was uncomfortable for him. Then again on my side I don’t know why I’m there and I don’t know why they chose me, but I feel very honored of course and I’ll do whatever I can to enhance Giger’s legacy in my tiny way because he’s a genius and I’m just Tom Warrior.

Ian Christie

Can you shed a little light on what the Giger reality was like? If you went to see him maybe for an hour, you’d lose track of space and time.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

One of Giger’s ex-girlfriends is in this room and I probably should not shit any light on Giger’s daily existence. Giger was a very unique person and then if I would disclose anything of his private life, and I’m not trying to make it artificially exciting, but if I would shed any light of his existence I would intrude into his privacy. I know a lot of people intrude into Giger’s privacy. I don’t want to be part of that. Giger was a very unique person. He lived a very unique life. You had to be somehow very tolerant to understand this and to accept this. I cannot betray his trust by disclosing this. He was, in his own way, very open in private and this is really not the place to disclose it just because he’s dead.

Ian Christie

Well this is place for you to be open in public, so I’ll turn the spotlight back on you.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

My pathetic life compared to Giger, who’s basically the Hieronymus Bosch of the 21st century, that’s quite a difference. My life is irrelevant. Giger on the other hand will be known still in 1,000 years because he was a genius. I’m not saying that because I worked with him or because I was a friend. I was fortunate enough for example to witness Giger one day in his kitchen sketching something on a napkin. Just by the way he carried his pen, the way he drew, you could notice immediately. He has a talent that I’ve never seen in anybody else. It was just really evident without any worshiping that he’s a genius. He carried the pen in such a way it’s beyond description. Then you realize this is not the ordinary thing. Compared to that, seriously, I’m a nobody.

Ian Christie

Thank you. Your visual dexterity is very unique. It’s very unusual that a band’s member, a band leader, can set forth the visual style as you’ve done over many records. During this century though you’ve actually, and I’ve always assumed that, but I’ve never asked, maybe under the inspiration and encouragement of Giger, you’ve begun to make sculpture and I notice you’re wearing jewelry of your own design. This is the Triptykon logo. Did you even tell him about that?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

About what?

Ian Christie

About Tom Warrior death masks.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I gave him one and of course I was under no illusion that my “art” would amount to anything, but I gave him one just as a gift for his birthday one day many years ago. I gave him one of my death masks. One I really liked and I thought, you know, his house is filled with gifts by many people, musicians and artists, there’s fantastic gifts there, and I thought, “My stuff is just going to be the bottom of the pile,” but to my astonishment he told me to hang it up. He told me where and it’s quite a prominent place. Nobody was more astonished than me about that. My little ridiculous death masks are just a hobby of mine and Giger is an artist. I don’t know if he did it because he felt sorry for me. Seriously I’m not trying to artificially... He hung it up, so he knew that I was doing it. He professed that he liked it, but I don’t know.

I do these death masks because I was always fascinated ever since I was a child of death masks. There was a point in my life where I was wondering what my death mask would look like one day and I realized when I’m dead I’m not going to see it. So at the end of the 2007 Celtic Frost US tour Les Baron, Giger’s agent in America, arranged for me to go to Fangoria magazine’s premises and they have a workshop there and a few friends of his took a life cast of me and enabled me with this life cast to do my own death mask. It was just a curiosity of mine for my own purpose. To my astonishment somebody wanted to buy death masks, and then two people wanted to buy a death mask, and then it became an art project.

In reality it was just some spleen of mine to use my face as a canvas like I do on stage. To see my death mask while I’m still alive to see it. That’s really all there is to it. I am very careful with the word art both in my death masks or in music. Art is a huge word and in today’s society art is massively overstretched. Everybody calls themselves an artist. To me art takes talent. I’m quite unsure if I actually have talent. Seriously. If other people call my work art whether it’s music or my death masks, it’s flattering but I cannot really take it serious. Art to me is Dali, or Bosch, or Giger, but not Tom Fischer.

Ian Christie

Because your associations are so diverse, I’d like to ask you... You’re also very careful with the words friends, colleague, peer and inspiration. I’d like to know in the realm of peer who are some people when you come into contact with them you feel completely free, and the fog has been lifted, and there is someone that has been through something and you see eye to eye?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Well, there’s you for one thing.

Ian Christie

I was not fishing for that.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

One person I feel is a peer and which is also astonishing to me is Kevin Heybourne from Angel Witch, who as a young teenager I worshiped. I had everything by Angel Witch. This band was a major influence to me. Many years later I was fortunate enough to meet him and we became friends. It’s a friendship that lasts to this day. I know his life was far from easy too, which is probably something that connects us. He’s very different to me. He’s a very unique person. Kind of difficult to access, but in spite of that, I feel a strong connection to him. Should I live long enough we’ll probably do an album together. We’ve talked about it. That’s somebody I look at as a peer.

Ian Christie

Wow. Bill Steer from Carcass has been playing in Angel Witch so all of a sudden this project starts to take shape.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Bill never talks to me. I’ve met him a million times with Angel Witch. He’s always in the background not saying a word. I don’t know what’s his problem.

Ian Christie

His problem is he’s an incredibly shy person.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

That’s a shame. He looks fantastic. He’s a fantastic guitar player.

Ian Christie

Fantastic guitar player.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

He used to be a fantastic member of Angel Witch. It’s a shame.

Ian Christie

Well, he’s wasting his time with this death metal stuff.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I’m glad you said that.

Ian Christie

When you look down the tendrils of time into the bands and acts of today, maybe in your estimation Dark Throne is a younger band but they’ve been around 25 years now already or 30 actually. What lights up? What are some bands or some modes of operating as a heavy band that give you a little... I’m not going to say faith in tomorrow. I’m not going to put that burden on you, but where you see some fire today?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

You’re really asking me very difficult questions.

Ian Christie

I came a long way to ask you these questions.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I’m generally very disillusioned with today’s scene. Maybe that’s a factor of my age and I’m sorry about that but fortunately or unfortunately I was born in 1963 and because of that I was a witness to at least two periods that were extremely exciting and the kind of music that we talked about, heavy rock, heavy metal. One was the 1970s. The other one was the early 1980s.

Having lived through that time and having that time influence my life significantly, I find it extremely difficult to find something that’s equally inspiring nowadays. Now maybe that makes me sound old, but you’re asking me for my personal opinion and unfortunately that’s it. I wish it was different. Honestly. Sometimes I listen to these modern bands and they’re all perfect beyond description. They’re much more perfect than any bands. We all wanted to be so perfect in the early ’80s but we couldn’t. Nowadays even the youngest musicians are so perfect.

Sometimes I wonder is that really the goal of heavy music? Maybe it’s the goal of jazz but heavy music to me is always anarchy, revolution, energy. I miss that in all the technical perfection and the technical perfection is even enhanced by computer technology in the studio. I wonder is that really the purpose of heavy music? To me it’s not. To me heavy music is passion. It’s a fire. And if you play a mistake, fuck it.

Unfortunately nowadays, at least the albums I hear they are produced to death and most of it is recorded directly into the computer. I like albums where you actually hear the air between the amp and the microphone. Where you hear the drums screeching. The screws on the drums. You don’t hear that anymore. There’s a couple of modern bands that I like. Like Wounded Kings, or Scorpion Child, or Orchid, but what are these bands doing? They’re basically recreating music that existed in the ’70s. It’s not really modern metal per se. Maybe that reflects poorly on me or it reflects poorly on the current metal scene. I don’t know. I’m not the person to make that judgment, but that’s the way I see it and I miss it hugely. I miss hearing albums with fire. Albums with some kind of dirt. With imperfections but with perfection in passion. I miss that. There’s a competition going on between guitar players. How many notes you can play in a minute and how perfect you can play that? How fast and how complicated your albums can be.

Look at Obscura for example who are a phenomenal band, but what is the purpose? Is it the Olympics of heavy metal or are we talking about heavy, metal? That’s a question I pose to myself. Maybe I’m an old fart. I know that, but I’ve spent an entire life in the scene and I’m very passionate about it. I wish all of the young people playing music nowadays would just fucking thrash a guitar from time to time. Throw over a stack of Marshalls like I did it, because that’s really the essence of that music. Not playing 10,000 notes perfectly. I have huge respect for that, but that’s not all there is to it. If you want to do that, go to a university. To me personally, there’s no place for that on the heavy metal stage. That’s why I went to do heavy metal.

Ian Christie

As you mentioned, being a little kid when Deep Purple played here in Zurich and seeing on television the news reports of mayhem, and fires and bottles smashed everywhere, and the kids just running wild when they heard this.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I said that many times tonight. My opinion is just my opinion and my opinion is heavily shaped by my fucked up youth. I know other people had a much more perfect youth and probably have a much more balanced view of how things should be. I grew up very fanatically, very radically, and of course that translates into the way I approach music. Everything I say is of course to be taken with a grain of salt. I know people are not Tom Warrior, and that’s fine, but that’s why heavy metal attracted me. There was some anarchy in it.

If I wanted perfection I could have gone to some political party where everything’s by the book. Or I could have become a tax advisor or a banker because everything there is by the book and the more perfect you are, the better you are. I’m into heavy metal because there’s anarchy and because there you can actually smash a fucking guitar. I really miss that. I miss when heavy metal was like that. It’s become as sterile as so many other things now in our times and I think that’s a shame. Even punk nowadays is fucking designed. What’s wrong with people?

Ian Christie

You just opened the door for me to ask you about the unexpected “Blood Insanity” 7", a new release by Hellhammer in 2016. How did that come about? What was your intention?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

We were totally passionate in the early ’80s about 7" singles by new wave British heavy metal bands. Of course our unfulfilled dream was to release a 7" just like that. Nobody wanted to give us a record deal. Nobody took us serious, and we didn’t have the money, and we couldn’t even buy strings or guitar picks. That single remained a dream. We drafted a little memo where it stated all the details about such a single, but there was no way we could have realized such a single.

Nowadays I’m the owner of a record company in England and I have a name in the industry and I just need to call up some people and say, “Let’s do a single,” and they say, “Yes.” At a certain point in time I thought, “Why don’t I do the single now?” I called up Bruce Day and Steve Warrior from Hellhammer. I said, “What do you think if we do the single now just so it exists while we’re still alive?” and they were enthusiastic so we said, “OK, let’s do it.”

We did on our own label and it was distributed by Sony, which is incomprehensible for Hellhammer but that’s how it is nowadays. My work of 34 years in between has made this possible. It’s just a little personal spleen. This single doesn’t make us rich. There was a lot of people that said, “Oh, now he’s making money from Hellhammer.” It’s bullshit. This single is limited to 3,000 issues. It was hugely expensive in its creation. The single yielded peanuts as far as money is concerned. The purpose of the single was to see it existing while we are still existing. It was a little personal spleen for us to have a Hellhammer single while we’re still alive because that was our dream in 1983. That’s really the entire story of that single.

Ian Christie

Something in between Girl’s School and Holocaust in the 7" filing bin.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I would rather file it between Aragorn and Venom. Eric Keller will agree to that.

Ian Christie

Well, you just gave a shout out to a distinguished professor, a PhD who came out of the Hellhammer bunker. I was going to ask you that earlier and I am curious. What happened to this gang? Where’s the Hellhammer gang? Where are the Bassersdorf kids today? All these years later did they all die in motorcycle accidents or horrible drug-related deaths or have they all gone on to unique...

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I really don’t know.

Ian Christie

Where are Bruce Day and Steve Warrior for example?

Tom Gabriel Warrior

Bruce Day has a scuba diving school in Indonesia. Steve Warrior lives not far from here in Zurich. He’s had a very difficult life after Hellhammer. I really don’t want to go too far with that because it’s his private life. He’s doing reasonably okay nowadays. We are in contact, but he can’t play bass anymore.

Bruce Day occasionally tours as a road manager for quite well known bands but he doesn’t play an instrument anymore. As for the other bands who attended our rehearsals, I know some of them still, but some of them also, at least for me, they got lost in the haze of time unfortunately. Even so, without wanting to sound nostalgic, I carry these people in my thoughts all the time. There’s never a moment when I work with Triptykon… For example, when we were onstage in Wacken [Open Air Festival], which is probably the pinnacle of what you can achieve with the music that we were playing, these people are always part of me and my roots are always a part of me. I’m never detached from that. I always have to see that experience in the Hellhammer bunker in my mind. Always. I am never tempted to be on some kind of star trip. I would have never been on that Wacken stage three times without these people. Some of those people were extremely instrumental. One of those people bought me my first Iceman guitar, which is a guitar type that I still play to this day. They gave their money, their time to make Hellhammer, and later Celtic Frost, huge. Again, Tom Warrior wouldn’t exist without these people [points to audience] and the people we were talking about right now. Even at the moment when I’m onstage in Wacken I think of these people and that’s really the truth. I have no illusions about my own talent. I know very well that I would not be on such a platform without these people. Even if I don’t know what they’re doing nowadays, some of those.

Ian Christie

I think the status of the Hellhammer bunker where so many of these events went down, if I understood correctly, the building... It was underneath a kindergarten, first off. Death metal and black metal had its...

Tom Gabriel Warrior

It was a kindergarten underneath a kindergarten.

Ian Christie

Under a kindergarten. A romper room under it.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

That took you a while.

Ian Christie

The building was demolished a few years ago and a new building was built, so of course you’d think it’s lost. There’s no more bunker. As it turns out, the bunker survived.

Tom Gabriel Warrior

I think the actual bunker survived. They replaced the building above it, but in doing so they dismantled part of the bunker and I saved some of the stones of the Hellhammer bunker. I have them actually framed at home. That’s how important that place was to me. This was the bunker where we created the Hellhammer demo, Apollyon Sun, the Apocalyptic Raids EP. Where we formed Celtic Frost, where we wrote To Mega Therion. Where we wrote Into the Pandemonium. Of course I went there with my mountain bike and I filled my pockets with rubble from the part of the bunker they disassembled. I could not bear seeing it go. I had to preserve that because to me my entire life took shape in that place.

Ian Christie

So thank you very much for attending a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear...

Tom Gabriel Warrior

To hear me screech. [laughs]

Ian Christie

To hear a man known for his deep gravely voice use it to express the vast thoughts inside of that mind. Thank you, thank you Tom. [applause]