Despite facing insurmountable odds, because of a locked down center of Athens due to the voting on major laws being effected that will literally maim the income of every one in Greece, with the “leftist” government mobilizing army level police forces to pass a law as undemocratic as fuck, instead of passing on true reforms and strikes on all sort of services as well as means of public transport, nothing seemed able to stop the 4 pronged strike of extreme metal that took part in the center of Athens.
With a venue change reported only a couple of weeks prior to the gig, things might have gotten a bit confusing and I remember both being a little skeptical as well as having to navigate myself by memory and luck to the new venue and having to do a couple of rounds to find a place to park, but finally I did arrive in the club and was about to watch the bands who just sort of started a little later than reported, maybe 20 minutes to half an hour later, a fact that didn’t hurt as it enabled a few more people to make it to the venue timely.
Entering the club I noticed a rather odd, slightly bizarre multilevel arrangement, spacey enough but in a sort of weird way that took a bit of getting used to but was OK, I was somewhat concerned about the sound, but weirdly enough and for a death metal gig the sound was really clear and quite loud, amazingly.
Now first on, Ascendant Path came out, a rather youthful looking band that has been on hiatus for two out of their four years of existence but seem to be back into action these days. If I am not mistaken they don’t have any album out, just the odd “YouTube” upload. They were not bad in their technical thrashy metal that seems to try and combine a lot of influences outside the narrow confines of that sub-genre. They did open with “Dark Optimist”, did a few more songs among, which a cover of Septic Flesh’s “Anubis” and finished off with “Fallen One” probably their better song. Not bad at all, as a band and they seem capable of much better things, they only were unlucky to “open” so the crowd was slightly smaller and they had to endure a somewhat fluctuating, but overall decent sound.
Aherusia have been around for more than 10 years now and they have a couple of albums out. They are characterized as a Black Metal band, which you cannot argue with, but they are quite melodic and they have a lot of folk elements in their mostly long winded compositions. They did sound tighter and better rehearsed than the previous time I had witnessed them – which was a while ago, but because of a funny cloakroom arrangement their bassist Jim was obscured for about a third of the viewers (which is funny as he asked me what I thought about the show later – to which I responded, I could hear you, but hardly saw you…) with some orchestrations added, three guitars and frontman Voreas, being unusually vocal for an “extreme” metal guy. I must say their show was entertaining as it was energetic. The songs do allude a bit to the style of earlier Rotting Christ, but have a few quite Maidenesque passages that are also nicely married with more “traditional” melodies and sing-along chants that create a quite unique amalgam. Their sound was much better, but not perfect, in part probably to the fact that they are a little more chaotic, but in a rather “organized” way. But for a 3 guitar combo, it was surprisingly clear and sharp; you could hear everything, so no qualms there. The band that’s currently working on a third album, tentatively called “Prometheus”, did a couple of highly experimental and altered version of their songs “Lux Occulta” and “Archangels” from their debut, which went down like a storm in the Aegean before performing yet another song from their debut, “Methexis”. They, then, switched to their sophomore for the also stormy “Archipelagos” and “Arbor Martyrum” with a further third song from that album “Mano Incognitum” performed as an encore at the crowds request, leaving out a couple of songs from their sophomore that were conspicuous in their absence like “Ε Η Θ (Ελευθερία ή Θάνατος)” for instance… oh well, I should say that I really enjoyed the banter of Voreas, who did plug his poetry collection, the band’s merch as well as made jokes about being broke after popping bottles at the booze-oukia during Easter, citing that as a reason to support them and then poking fun at the “too serious” and wrathful “black metallers” telling the crowd that he was told to be “more serious and grim” but he couldn’t do a shit about that. Haha!
Acid Death atypically the reason behind the organization of the whole evening were up next; a band that had previously toured with Master around Europe and decided to ask them to come back and true stalwarts of the Greek scenes having enjoyed a productive run from 1989 up to 2001, before going on a ten year hiatus that ceased in 2011 with the band furthering their discography from two to four albums and an EP. With a sound that was a cut above the rest and a maniacal frontman in singer/bassist Savvas Bettinis, the band stormed onto the stage and gave a lesson in technical violent Death/Thrash. Checking pretty much almost every one of their releases, even the EP – but obviously with a heavy focus on their most recent release, 2015’s “Hall of Mirrors”, Acid Death delivered a nearly flawless and dynamic set of nine tracks that really connected with the crowd that must have been up to 120 or so people, the attendance maxing out – but probably kept low by the strikes in public transportation. Their setlist consisted of “Mental Slime”, “Truth Revealed”, “Balance of Power” (from the eponymous EP), as aforementioned, “W(rong).A(nd).R(ight)”, “Hall of Mirrors”, “Dragon Queen”, “No Sky Above”, “Supreme Act of Heroism”, a song about suicides, who view the act as a last call and a heroic action, and lastly the classic “Apathy Murders Hope”, which heralded the finish of their show…
A little time later, after another beer and a small foray outside the club to get some “fresh” air, we went back in to witness Master, a veteran death metal band with more than a dozen albums and more than three decades in their career with only small downtime. Paul Speckmann, the band’s leader looks like a friggin Biblical figure with his long beard, but once he opens his mouth it’s like having opened the seven gates of hell, with bile and probably his guts coming out, in some really brutal and hardly eligible vocals! He also seems really hard to be phased, which is kinda funny. He seemed more concerned in getting him “Lemmy” right, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care for his performance, which was torrential. I could hardly believe my eyes as the relatively small crowd would create mini-pits and even stage-dived from a stage that wasn’t really all that tall. I think that even a member of Acid Death did jump into the pit at some point! (ouch)… They did perform a pretty standardized set that pretty much is indicative of their discography and included “Master”, “Subdue the Politician” (them fooking bastards – hang em I say), “Shoot to Kill”, “Slaves to Society”, “Judgment of Will”, “Collection of Souls”, “Unknown Soldier”, “Submerged in Sin”, “Death Strikes”, “Re-Entry and Destruction” as well as another cover that of Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave” (but way faster), the hard hitting, bile spewing “Betrayal”, “Cut Through the Filth”, “Remorseless Poison” and “Pay to Die”. Actually after the Sabbath cover, and because the crowd wasn’t demanding an encore “loud enough” Speckmann asked: “is this a gig or a funeral?”… which could only mean they’d return with “Funeral Bitch” – quite the inventive way to announce it. They sounded great and played really well and I’m guessing that the hundred plus crowd that decided/managed to get there despite all the issues must have enjoyed a small extreme metal “Wargasm”… Till next time then…
Entering the club I noticed a rather odd, slightly bizarre multilevel arrangement, spacey enough but in a sort of weird way that took a bit of getting used to but was OK, I was somewhat concerned about the sound, but weirdly enough and for a death metal gig the sound was really clear and quite loud, amazingly.
Now first on, Ascendant Path came out, a rather youthful looking band that has been on hiatus for two out of their four years of existence but seem to be back into action these days. If I am not mistaken they don’t have any album out, just the odd “YouTube” upload. They were not bad in their technical thrashy metal that seems to try and combine a lot of influences outside the narrow confines of that sub-genre. They did open with “Dark Optimist”, did a few more songs among, which a cover of Septic Flesh’s “Anubis” and finished off with “Fallen One” probably their better song. Not bad at all, as a band and they seem capable of much better things, they only were unlucky to “open” so the crowd was slightly smaller and they had to endure a somewhat fluctuating, but overall decent sound.
Aherusia have been around for more than 10 years now and they have a couple of albums out. They are characterized as a Black Metal band, which you cannot argue with, but they are quite melodic and they have a lot of folk elements in their mostly long winded compositions. They did sound tighter and better rehearsed than the previous time I had witnessed them – which was a while ago, but because of a funny cloakroom arrangement their bassist Jim was obscured for about a third of the viewers (which is funny as he asked me what I thought about the show later – to which I responded, I could hear you, but hardly saw you…) with some orchestrations added, three guitars and frontman Voreas, being unusually vocal for an “extreme” metal guy. I must say their show was entertaining as it was energetic. The songs do allude a bit to the style of earlier Rotting Christ, but have a few quite Maidenesque passages that are also nicely married with more “traditional” melodies and sing-along chants that create a quite unique amalgam. Their sound was much better, but not perfect, in part probably to the fact that they are a little more chaotic, but in a rather “organized” way. But for a 3 guitar combo, it was surprisingly clear and sharp; you could hear everything, so no qualms there. The band that’s currently working on a third album, tentatively called “Prometheus”, did a couple of highly experimental and altered version of their songs “Lux Occulta” and “Archangels” from their debut, which went down like a storm in the Aegean before performing yet another song from their debut, “Methexis”. They, then, switched to their sophomore for the also stormy “Archipelagos” and “Arbor Martyrum” with a further third song from that album “Mano Incognitum” performed as an encore at the crowds request, leaving out a couple of songs from their sophomore that were conspicuous in their absence like “Ε Η Θ (Ελευθερία ή Θάνατος)” for instance… oh well, I should say that I really enjoyed the banter of Voreas, who did plug his poetry collection, the band’s merch as well as made jokes about being broke after popping bottles at the booze-oukia during Easter, citing that as a reason to support them and then poking fun at the “too serious” and wrathful “black metallers” telling the crowd that he was told to be “more serious and grim” but he couldn’t do a shit about that. Haha!
Acid Death atypically the reason behind the organization of the whole evening were up next; a band that had previously toured with Master around Europe and decided to ask them to come back and true stalwarts of the Greek scenes having enjoyed a productive run from 1989 up to 2001, before going on a ten year hiatus that ceased in 2011 with the band furthering their discography from two to four albums and an EP. With a sound that was a cut above the rest and a maniacal frontman in singer/bassist Savvas Bettinis, the band stormed onto the stage and gave a lesson in technical violent Death/Thrash. Checking pretty much almost every one of their releases, even the EP – but obviously with a heavy focus on their most recent release, 2015’s “Hall of Mirrors”, Acid Death delivered a nearly flawless and dynamic set of nine tracks that really connected with the crowd that must have been up to 120 or so people, the attendance maxing out – but probably kept low by the strikes in public transportation. Their setlist consisted of “Mental Slime”, “Truth Revealed”, “Balance of Power” (from the eponymous EP), as aforementioned, “W(rong).A(nd).R(ight)”, “Hall of Mirrors”, “Dragon Queen”, “No Sky Above”, “Supreme Act of Heroism”, a song about suicides, who view the act as a last call and a heroic action, and lastly the classic “Apathy Murders Hope”, which heralded the finish of their show…
A little time later, after another beer and a small foray outside the club to get some “fresh” air, we went back in to witness Master, a veteran death metal band with more than a dozen albums and more than three decades in their career with only small downtime. Paul Speckmann, the band’s leader looks like a friggin Biblical figure with his long beard, but once he opens his mouth it’s like having opened the seven gates of hell, with bile and probably his guts coming out, in some really brutal and hardly eligible vocals! He also seems really hard to be phased, which is kinda funny. He seemed more concerned in getting him “Lemmy” right, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care for his performance, which was torrential. I could hardly believe my eyes as the relatively small crowd would create mini-pits and even stage-dived from a stage that wasn’t really all that tall. I think that even a member of Acid Death did jump into the pit at some point! (ouch)… They did perform a pretty standardized set that pretty much is indicative of their discography and included “Master”, “Subdue the Politician” (them fooking bastards – hang em I say), “Shoot to Kill”, “Slaves to Society”, “Judgment of Will”, “Collection of Souls”, “Unknown Soldier”, “Submerged in Sin”, “Death Strikes”, “Re-Entry and Destruction” as well as another cover that of Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave” (but way faster), the hard hitting, bile spewing “Betrayal”, “Cut Through the Filth”, “Remorseless Poison” and “Pay to Die”. Actually after the Sabbath cover, and because the crowd wasn’t demanding an encore “loud enough” Speckmann asked: “is this a gig or a funeral?”… which could only mean they’d return with “Funeral Bitch” – quite the inventive way to announce it. They sounded great and played really well and I’m guessing that the hundred plus crowd that decided/managed to get there despite all the issues must have enjoyed a small extreme metal “Wargasm”… Till next time then…
photod by Dimitris Trivellas
