As a guy who has always associated gothic subculture with overt pretentiousness and silliness, it's no wonder I've never really quite grasped the whole gothic metal thing. Of course, like anyone with an ounce of soul, I can appreciate the dark and romantic side of things, but not at the expense of reality - life is not, thankfully, an eternally suffering chapter of an Edgar Allen Poe tome. That said, some metal bands have successfully married gothic elements into their music. We would have to trip all the way back to the early 90s to find some truly classic albums from bands such as MY DYING BRIDE, ANATHEMA, PARADISE LOST, TIAMAT, and TYPE O NEGATIVE. These days, we'd be hard-pressed to find music as grandiose, romantic, and heavy. In fact, most, if not all, current bands attempting this co-mingling of metal and goth end up crossing that fine line that separates the seriously depressive and dark from the realm of the pretentious. We could actually travel even further back than the aforementioned bands; back to a time when a leather and spike clad warrior bellowed grotesque hymns from atop Scandinavian stages. This warrior, a literal warrior, aptly named Tom G. Warrior, fronted one of the first truly gothic, depressive, and evil metal bands to have ever existed... the mighty CELTIC FROST. For those of you just crawling out of your silk-adorned IKEA coffins, Tom is back with TRIPTYKON, his newest ode to the dark. With his latest offering, entitled Melana Chasmata, Tom has created an album steeped with a palpable sense of dread - a terrifying musical apparition that lingers around every darkened corner. The compositions shift between punchy ENTOMBED-like tempos to slow, concussive, hypnotic rhythms. Occasionally, a brief glimpse of light seeps through, casting ghastly, foreboding shadows across the entirety of the doom-laden affair. Melana Chasmata is a much heavier outing, having more in common with Celtic Frost's Monotheist than anything else Triptykon has released, which tends to be more experimental. Tom has taken great care to insure that every suffocating riff be a path sheathed with the decaying memories of love; where each anguished exhale, the echo of death's chilling breath, quivers its way down the twisted and tangled spine of life.