Rock Company 2025
Chronicles Of Dystopia
Refracting current affairs through the lens of heaviosity, Greek foursome offer stylistically expansive full-length debut.
If this quartet didn’t want to expedite their first album, which arrived at the end of a seven-year-stretch of the ensemble existence, when scratching a seven-year-itch seemed like a necessity, it was a wise decision: forming a repertoire and firming riffs take time and require solid strength and impressive stance. While a three-piece single announced the band’s entrance to the whole world back in 2023, their first longplay more than merely build on their opening salvo. The nine numbers that comprise “Chronicles Of Dystopia” present a wider boilerplate, where what could come across as formulaic impresses in terms of subgenre spectrum, with various strands of hard rock exposing different facets of the group’s performative prowess.
Surprisingly, it all the songs move as organically as any array of diatribes aimed at global injustices should go. Whereas the highly melodic “Eigengrau” sticks to traditional heavy values, with sweet ivories fleshing out Yannis Kemenidis’ guitars, the angry opener “0.003” puts hooks in the listener via classic metal, with Konstantina Damianidou’s vocals constructing memorable refrains, and builds tension via an ever-growing aural assault only to dissolve the attack in a mellifluous bridge and warmly lit coda. That’s why the audience can’t be prepared for prog arrangement of the unpredictably flowing “Born To Believe” or alt. harmonics of the mostly dry, if coldly attractive, “Into Fractions” which follows this rather theatrical piece. And though “Sugar” whips up glam merriment for the record’s finale, such a shift is quite welcome after somewhat insipid folksy ballad “Midnight Run” – a single weak point of the otherwise strong album – and “Insidious” which unleashes a few thrash elements to expand the collective’s horizons.
As Constantine Stavrou’s bass and Yannis Tarasis’ drums tighten the veneer of “Disobedience” that would seem a bit monotonous without their groove, the dynamic frontiers get pushed too, so “Black Water” receives a lot of room for faux-symphonic sway. That’s exactly the space this band need to proceed further into the future, and their future must be bright.
****3/4
