Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones (2010)
Tom G said:
Triptykon will sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible, and the album I am working on will feature all the material I envisioned for the successor to Celtic Frost's Monotheist. I desire the album to be a darker, heavier, and slightly more experimental development of Monotheist.
Nothing too deceptive about that pre-release announcement there. Tom's 'debut' album with Triptykon does very closely mimic the sound of the last Celtic Frost album,
Monotheist (along with recycling over 100 ideas from it and -- er, wait... were there even 100 ideas on
Monotheist to begin with?). The sole major difference I can discern on
ED (lol) is that it is rather 'deathier', and indeed Tom breaks out some
actual death growls on occasion, as opposed to his signature cacophonous squawking. Who knew the man was so versatile!
If there's anything distinctively misleading about the above quotation, really, it's the phrase "slightly more experimental". I listened hard, now, and I believe I heard what Tom was referring to: about 80 seconds of piano playing wedged into the middle of "Myopic Empire". Whoa there now, Tom, you're really pushin' the envelope with
that one! You might have even offended the sensibilities of two or three A.D.D. goregrind addicts who are allergic to clearly audible melodies. Sadly, the piano bit is far too pretty for the length it is given, coming to a nice poignant ending before the guitars roar up again and Tom starts croaking "Myopic empire..." over and over again.
As with most metal albums, I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics, and most of the ones I could discern reminded me of something the Undertaker would say when trash-talking his opponents on WWE Raw ("Ah shull feed on yur decay...
YEEUHH"). Not exactly a stark contrast with the lyrics of
Monotheist, though I think there were at least a few tasteful and near-poetic lyrics on that album. Quite honestly, I can think of no good reason to listen to
Eparisdiarrhea Daimones instead of
Monotheist, unless it were to hear the adequately tight old-school death metal throwback "A Thousand Lies", in which case you might as well be listening to an old-school death metal band to begin with.
