Metal Underground.com

The question of whether or not Tom Fischer can still create anything worthwhile without Martin Eric Ain has finally been answered. Yes, he indeed can, and the results are spectacular. "Eparistera Daimones" bears the same amount of quality Fisher's fans have come to expect, being just as heavy as "Monotheist," but less introspective and more incensed. The rage at Fisher's former bandmates comes across in every note played and even lyrically in the track "Myopic Empire." Yet, "Eparistera Daimones" still sounds like a defiant continuation of "Monotheist," a statement that Fischer will not let the end of Celtic Frost alter his artistic vision in any way. Triptykon is not a new entity at all, but rather the same old band that we've known and loved since 1984.

Imagine a less dynamic or nuanced version of "Monotheist" and you have the riffs on "Eparistera Daimones" in a nutshell. This is not a pretty album. It does not care about you. In fact, "Eparistera Daimones" may even hold you in contempt. It's slow, occasionally groovy, but always intense.

"Eparistera Daimones" is an incredibly heavy album. With the exceptions of a few faster parts and some occasional soft moments, Fischer has mastered the art of making a slow and oppressive album that only seems to relent when it looks back upon itself and wonders what it has done before going back to the "normal" heavy droning sound, assuming it isn't deciding to punish you further, like on the fast and vicious "A Thousand Lies."

While this is indeed a heavy, angry album, it does not substitute aggression for atmosphere. "Eparistera Daimones" instead comes across as a claustrophobic experience, even on the soft interlude "My Pain." The lyrics at first sound sweet, as a soft female voice speaks, "fall asleep in my arms," before taking a deleterious turn by eventually adding in, "never to wake up ever again," to the end of the sentence, returning the listener to the menacing and ominous atmosphere from before. That is where this album is brilliant; even when it mellow out sonically, it never stops punishing your soul.

That isn't to say that the album doesn't have flaws. For one thing, Fischer's "epic voice" on "The Prolonging" comes across as weak and simultaneously overacted, yet not dramatic enough and the clean vocals that Martin Ain performed on "Monotheist" being absent creates a feeling that there's a void in "Eparistera Daimones" that was never filled. It's still a great debut album on its own terms and a worthy successor to the Celtic Frost name, but it seems to fall a bit short of the high mark left four years earlier by "Monotheist."