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Helm wrote:Hehe, 30 years of HM and there's just Exoristoi to talk about. And Exoristoi have been made fun of in so many occasions by greek HM listeners for singing in Greek (and other lower stuff like Katis' diminishing hairline or whatever). Another good attempt was by the Greek death metal band Godless, who did two videoclips of two of their songs that were in Greek (yes, brutal deep, guttural vocals) and the result was POWERFUL for me, much more powerful than any run-of-the-mill English-writing Greek death metal band. It helps that Godless are (were? I can't find any traces of them on-line anymore) able in composition and as lyricists, of course. For me their experiment with Greek lyrics solidified my belief that this should be explored even more and that it hasn't in 30 years only speaks volumes of how guilty Greeks feel about being Greek in the context of HM.

Haha, not my fault that there's only Exoristoi to talk about! Anyway, no matter what i believe about their music, i must admit that their lyrical approach is honest and quite successfull at times. They wanted to write in Greek and they did it, not perfectly imo, but the result was not bad. Note that i'm talking about their first album only, because tracks of utter hilarity like "Σοσιαλιστές" or whatever it was called are out of the discussion. Again, i must mention that i am not judging the result of the lyrics alone, but the combination of the Greek lyrics and the suitable vocal lines. I don't care much about great thought-provoking lyrics if they are not sung well or supported by worthwile music.

I must also check out Godless. Can you actually understand what he is singing or is it just a Cannibla Corpse-like sound that makes no difference whether it is sung in English or Chinese?

You can very clearly understand the lyrics. There were two video clips on youtube a long time ago, but they've obviously been deleted for extreme content. I wonder where they could be found now...

i have em from their site,i think they should still be there? those 2 videos absolutely rule even though i dont listen to that type of music

url please?

Slightly OT, but what does Kawir stand for? To me, they were musically quite OK, at least on the Eumenides EP and to a lesser extent To Cavirs.

I remember the first time I heard the Greek BM bands/style.. the first thing I noticed was the use of a drum machine!
I kinda cringed at it when I first heard it then I got used to the sound & really enjoyed most of those RC/Varathron/Necromantia releases.
I guess the same drum machine was used on each recording??
For me, the use of the drum machine was the Greek sound!

hehe, Storm Studios drum machine. Yes, a lot of this material was recorded at the same place.

Vansinne: sadly, they're quite the nationalists.

the Rotting Christ 'Satanas Tedeum' demo is one of the best things I've ever heard!

I agree!

My heart lies with "Thy Mighty Contract". The BEST BM album of all time for me.

I strongly prefer 'Passage to Arcturo!' heh

tomas wrote:the Rotting Christ 'Satanas Tedeum' demo is one of the best things I've ever heard!

I always thought of this one being gore-themed Death-Metal trying being Black-Metal by adding satanic lyrics and imagery. I mean, throw the keyboards out and add a cleaner sound, and you get something that owes more to early CANNIBAL CORPSE than to DEICIDE or MERCILESS. Not that it's a bad demo per se. It's simply a demo like the dozens of bands from this era that went from Death-Metal to Black-Metal.
That's not the case of VARATHRON demos IMO. They were quite DM sounding but the occult touch was already present.

BTW, Ophiolatreia from KAWIR is quite a good album. Not very Greek sounding yet totally epic and superior to their previous works.

Oh come one, how can you say that RC's Satanas Tedeum minus the keyboards would sound like Deicide and Cannibal Corpse. The ST demo is very dark and occult-sounding

This demo just sounds like a DM demo disguised as a Black-Metal one IMO. And I talked of DEICIDE because Satanas Tedeum is less "satanic" sounding than any of the early DEICIDE albums, so if this demo is Death-Metal, it isn't Satanic DM like DEICIDE, MERCILESS, INCANTATION, etc, did, and more alike to the gore-themed bands.

Fascinating last few posts. Satanic or occult-themed death metal is many times more 'black' for me than blastbeat drones for the Norwegian woods! Not that I have anything against the Norwegian style, I love In The Woods..., Fleurety, early Ulver and the like, but that doesn't mean this type is the end-all-be-all of what black metal can be.

Satanas Tedeum is not even very death metal, it's very sloppy, very noisy, very grindcore-ish really, but the chants to the black star in the sky and such give it its black metal identity. Passage to Arcturo is like, 70% Cthulhu-Mythos-inspired and not satanic (I think only the intro and Gloria Domino Inferni could be said to be direct mentions to relegious themes) and the music owes more to Sodom than anything else, yet could you call it anything but a black metal masterpiece?