Chad Bowar: Celtic Frost's comeback has been in the works for a while. Give us a timeline on how everything came together.
Tom Gabriel Fischer: Our former record company Noise Records approached us to do a reissue project of the old classic Celtic Frost albums in 1999. Up to that point Celtic Frost had been absolutely dead. The former members had completely different lives. Hardly anybody ever got in touch with each other. Celtic Frost was very much in the past. We had a million reunion offers, some of them with a lot of money attached, and we always said no, especially me. I loathed the idea. But then we did these reissues and it got me together with Martin (Eric Ain) for the first time in ten years. What happened was an explosion of friendship and creativity and the bond that we had shared since we were teenagers. This expanded even after the reissues were done. We stayed in contact, we met regularly and talked about writing music together. It became fairly obvious to us that the ideas we had for music were virtually identical. We eventually decided to begin writing material. It was clear that if Martin and I would work together, it would be Celtic Frost again. That was in late 2001.
And you've been working on new material steadily since then?
Almost every day. We wrote and recorded in parallel basically from the first month. We worked almost every day on this album.
How come drummer Reed St. Mark couldn't be a part of the reunited band?
At the time he had health problems. It was clear for Martin and me that there would be no other drummer. We wanted to do it with Reed. I talked to Reed about it at length, but eventually we had to concede that it wouldn't be possible. Nowadays Reed is in a much better place. I talked to him a short time ago and he sounds fantastic. But at that time unfortunately it was impossible.
Now what seemed to Martin and me a total catastrophe at the time turned out to be almost a blessing. I say that carefully because I respect Reed. It wasn't easy to find a replacement for Reed as you can imagine. The one we eventually found was more willing to become a member of the band than Reed had ever been. Reed, for example, had never signed a recording contract with us where Franco (Sesa) is a full member of the band. He writes music and is involved in the artwork and production just like Martin and I. Eventually the album encountered such severe difficulties during these four years that some of them were only surmounted with Franco's help. I believe Franco now, looking back, was absolutely essential to this process.
How would you describe the sound of the new album Monotheist?
I believe it's classic Celtic Frost and yet it is Celtic Frost like you've never heard it. Celtic Frost never did the same album twice, and it's the same with this album. You will hear from the first note to the last note that this is definitely a Celtic Frost album. We've done some things that we had never done before and the band sounds much heavier, much darker nowadays. It's simply our place in life right now. We are not teenagers anymore. We are men, we are older than most current bands and that is simply reflected in the strength and confidence and heaviness of the music. It's by far the heaviest and darkest album by Celtic Frost and it's also the most personal and emotional and intimate album as far as lyrics are concerned.
