Tom Gabriel Fischer: No it's not. The 80s were dominated by heavy metal. Heavy metal was one of the most prominent musical directions of the 80s. It's not like that nowadays. Heavy metal is present, but it's not the dominating music. Hip-hop is. If I'm allowed to be critical for a second, heavy metal is to blame for that. Heavy metal is an extremely conservative musical direction that perpetually copies itself and succumbs to clichés and ideas of what a certain heavy metal image must be, and what a certain heavy metal record must be. There are a million bands that sound exactly like one another. There are very few heavy metal bands that actually care to do something new for fear of being labeled as sellouts or traitors or they've left the brotherhood of the underground. I think that's detrimental to the state of heavy metal. This is a quick changing modern society. Things happen very fast, and if heavy metal doesn't rejuvenate itself and continuously revolutionize itself, it's going to be pushed into a corner. It's going to be a ghetto of music. It is going to be a niche market in music.
I don't mean to say that heavy metal has to conform to what the masses need, but it wouldn't hurt for heavy metal to occasionally rethink and revolutionize itself and also be aggressive and fresh and show the other musical directions what we can do. Heavy metal musicians are good. So why don’t we do that? When I go to a record store, all the death metal bands sound the same and all the black metal bands sound the same. That is not good for heavy metal and heavy metal’s standing in the world. In the 80s heavy metal became so big because it came in as a revolutionary force. It sounded totally different than the metal of the 70s. It took a hint from punk and new wave, took the energy from those musical directions and incorporated it and it became totally new music. It fascinated everybody. Why don't we do that now?
Is that the fault of the record companies, the bands or the fans?
I think it is a combination of many things. On one side the record companies don't want risk. They want income. They see another record company that has a band that sells, and they go sign 50 of the same band. No risk, no investment. But not everybody can be a musical innovator. Nowadays it seems that everybody has a metal band. There must be thousands of metal bands, and by mere statistics not all of them can be innovative bands. But there are too many bands releasing mediocre stuff, average stuff. Some albums are good, but there's nothing new. How are we supposed to attract people to our fold if we perpetually just play the same old same old?
Before Celtic Frost got back together a few years ago you released an autobiography. Any plans to rewrite or update that book?
I'm working on that. I'm talking to some publishers. I'm working on a revised version. I have much better material now and better quality photos and stuff. I think I could do a very attractive update of that. I'm also working on a sequel to that book, but that will take a few years to be finished. I plan on writing a much more explicit sequel to it.
Right now the main project that Martin and I are working on is the Hellhammer book, which is a huge coffee table size book. I've spent 2 1/2 years collecting things. Some collectors have amazing photos of Hellhammer that I hadn't seen since 1983. I think I have pretty much everything in my home that Hellhammer has ever done, including unreleased artwork for the Hellhammer EP. I'm almost finished with the manuscript for that book. It will be the mother of all Hellhammer pieces and we hope to have it done for publication by the end of this year or early 2008.
You had actually rehearsed some Hellhammer songs for this tour, right?
Yes. The problem was they came together too well, but that's not Hellhammer. All the songs sounded great, but they sounded like Celtic Frost faking Hellhammer. There was a point where I said we just can't do that. It sounds very good, but that's not Hellhammer. I know a lot of fans wanted to hear that, but Hellhammer was a point in time that will never come again. It was our beginning, and I'm not that person anymore. I can't play that bad anymore. I'm too old and too experienced. I've analyzed the songs too much. I'm not going on stage and acting Hellhammer. It's either the real Hellhammer or nothing. Hellhammer is not a band that should resurrect for money. Hellhammer is a myth, and there's a reason for that. So at the end of the day we decided to be honest and leave it instead of playing fantastic versions of these unique songs.
Are you doing any filming for a future DVD release?
There's been tons of filming. A film team has also been following us around doing a documentary. It's a film team financed by a Swiss TV network. We plan on subtitling it later and releasing it as a DVD. We filmed a lot of shows, but we don't want to release the average live DVD. There are so many boring live DVD's out there and you can never capture a concert on DVD anyway. What we're trying to get accomplished is doing a concert film. It's a huge project and I don't know if we can get it done. It's a very ambitious project, a concept film like nobody's ever done before. Those are big words, but I can assure you that nobody's ever done that before. The thing is, it's very expensive. We can only do it with a partner in the industry, and we are trying to do that right now. We are talking to directors and hopefully we can get it accomplished. We went to make a real concert film that will make a statement like our albums. It's going to be a typical Celtic Frost project. Hopefully we can get that realized.
