Album Of The Week: Triptykon Melana Chasmata

The later, post-Optimus Prime death seasons of the original Transformers cartoon took place in the distant, futuristic year of 2006, when the Decepticons' most powerful weapon was Trypticon, an actual city that would transform into a vast purple-and-black dinosaur. Trypticon spent a lot of time fighting against Metroplex, an Autobot city that would also turn into a robot. During one episode -- and I had to Google this to make sure I hadn't imagined it as a kid -- Trypticon actually steals the Eiffel Tower for some reason. (Transformers got weird toward the end.) It's presumably pure coincidence that the Swiss extreme-metal originator Tom Gabriel Fischer gave his latest band an almost-identical name to Trypticon, as I've interviewed Fischer, and he did not strike me as the sort of person who has much time in his life for American cartoons from the '80s. Fischer is a deathly-serious type, someone who seems to spend the better part of his days plumbing the depths of his own depression, mining his soul for anything he can shape into his dark art. (Supposedly, Fischer's Triptycon is a play on the word "triptych," since it's his third major musical project.) And yet listening to Melana Chasmata, Triptykon's sophomore album, I can't help thinking about the Transformer Trypticon, about a lumbering and malevolent beast so humungous that its mere scale can fire a kid's imagination. Triptykon's music lunges and stomps and churns like an avenging futuristic/prehistoric beast, and Melana Chasmata almost feels like it doesn't belong on this planet. It's too huge, too bloodthirsty, to exist.