Media » Interviews » Terrorizer

Describe your music and influences

We play doom metal, that’s the right description! Maybe you want to call that epic doom or heavy doom but to say the whole truth, back in 1993 when we founded the band, our main influences were the 3 great doom metal bands, Memento Mori, Solitude Aeturnus and Candlemass. Of course, as the years passed, we tried to achieve our own style…

Give us a short Band history. What were your career highlights?

Sorrows Path were founded in 1993 by Takis Drakopoulos (bass) and Kostas Salomidis (guitar). The band had released two demo tapes in 1995 and 1996 and was ready back in 1998 to release their first album but there were some really bad circumstances! The one of the two founders of the band Takis died because of a serious brain disease in 1995, the band stopped all activities due to the military engagements of all members in 1998 and when the time for the return was soon to come, the other band’s founder Kostas was almost paralyzed because of a neck problem after a serious motorcycle accident of the past! He had to fight with this problem for 5 years until he felt strong enough again to play the guitar…

So the great highlights of this band are the come back after all these problems and the interest of some record labels to release the remastered version of our demo tapes! And the idea took flesh, through the Greek Eat Metal Records, with the album “Resurrection” in 2006.Plus, one day before the release of our album we had our first live performance after many years on ice, when we supported our mentors Solitude Aeturnus at Underworld club in Athens!

Ever since that time, the band is back in full action, and on May of 2008 we are entering the studio to record our next album, the first one with completely new songs!

What do you think of the Greek scene (zines, radio, fans, other bands, record labels)?

Things have certainly changed compared to yesterday but the morbid truth remains! The Greeks are still not as professional as they ought to be! See, for example, the seriousness and modesty of the people in north Europe and you’ll understand exactly what we are talking about…

Place your band in context within the Greek scene

We don’t believe that we could be fair judgers of ourselves! What is more, our only purpose is to express our doom metal philosophy and music, to speak about pain and sympathy, the salvation of man, rather than being compared to other people into a vain contradiction!

Why is Metal so popular in Greece? (Could it be more popular? What helps and what hinders it ?)

Metal is a very dramatic kind of music and the Greeks are famous for their ancient Greek culture, their theatre of tragedy and stuff like that! On the other hand, metal is dynamic and enthusing, and so are the Greeks!

Things could be really better, especially for the Greek bands, but Greek fans mainly support foreign bands, and we can’t blame them in many cases…

What Makes Greek Metal Unique?

Ha, great question! Greece is the cross path between East and West, so there are many musical influences and traditions to draw inspiration from, so if we talk about mature musicians we can find some great pieces of music, in many genres of Greek music. And of course, Greek heavy metal couldn’t be the exception!

How much of an influence is Greek history/culture on your music/lyrics ?

The spirit of Greek history and culture can be found everywhere! For example, some great German philosophers like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are strongly inspired by the ancient Greeks, and Sorrows Path’s philosophy is very close to theirs! On the other hand, the musical scales have been created by the ancient Greeks, so we can really be sure that we are also influenced by this whole tradition!

How much does contemporary Greek society and politics affect your band’s outlook?

We wonder how man can save his mortal existence through sympathy and pain and by overcoming his vanity and his desires! We talk about the liberation of man from the chains of dogmas and meanings so that he can find the animal and child that are hidden inside himself. We also express sarcasm and contempt towards vanity, fame, money, power and to all kinds of addictions. In a few words, we refer to things that can restore the broken harmonies anywhere they can be found! That is our one and only true vision instead of blaming some concrete kind of people like politicians or other…

What are the good and bad things about having a metal band in Greece?

The good thing is the unbelievable Greek enthusiasm, that’s synonymous with the metal way and the awfully bad thing is the well-known lack of professionalism and reliability that characterizes nearly all the Greek metal bands.

What is your latest release/plans?

As we mentioned above we released our demo tapes through Eat Metal Records in 2006 and until now are in search of the right people that would carry the burden of being the creators of our new album. We hope that until autumn 2008 this album will be ready. We also continue to perform some serious lives…

Finally, though I have all this, but just to be sure, please supply a link to your site or myspace .

Thank you very much for this interview, Stavros.