Tom Gabriel Fischer – metal music pioneer | Swiss Music Prizes 2021

Born in Zurich in 1963, singer and guitarist Tom Gabriel Fischer, aka Tom Gabriel Warrior, is known for his strong fighting spirit. He founded the extreme metal trio Hellhammer at the age of 18. That was his music school. The metal musician with a wealth of radical ideas would soon attract the attention of the Zurich underground scene. After the EP release of “Apocalyptic Raids“ (1984), Tom Gabriel Fischer broke up Hellhammer, paving the way for the meteoric rise of Celtic Frost, the heavy metal band he founded soon after. This legendary band inspired musicians worldwide, in and beyond the metal scene, among them Nirvana, the Foo Fighters and Marilyn Manson, to name but a few. In seven ground-breaking albums (especially “Into the Pandemonium“, 1987), Celtic Frost introduced, among other things, classical instruments into their sound cosmos and blew up genre boundaries with extreme playing styles and vocal techniques (e.g. growling), style breaks and eclectic fusion. The band’s lyrics were inspired by the symb