π. Διονύσιος Ταμπάκης (Father Dionysios Tabakis): Paradise Metal. Heat Crimes / Elhellel, cassette and digital, April 2026.
Greetings! The absolute banger of the season was recorded by a Greek priest: Father Dionysios Tabakis of Nafplio, who makes music alone, at home. It is the last breath of calm this summer. If anyone surfed the Kali Yuga this year, it was him, a priest hardly anyone had heard of outside his YouTube channel until this spring.
When I came across this album, what surprised me most was that death, in the ecstasy of our mouldering modern present, has apparently not yet touched everything, even now, with the whole world in flames, Ukraine, Iran and who knows where else. The black water, the waters stained with oil, melancholy itself find a reason to keep flowing here as never before, beneath the resonances and waves of a sound that carries the true nostalgia of all ages, in arching waves of vapour in the name of God. You can hear in it a love for people that time cannot destroy, and this love mocks the whole of society. Who today would think of Byzantine chant and the nemesis of pop culture and picture a priest with a fretless electric guitar? Two of those, please!
This is real resistance, a cry that the author is not dead, whatever the theorists say. It is a reason to know and to believe that you are not alone, like a flash of lightning in the desert beneath which a lonely sword gleams, in the name of all the saints of every confession. Even Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses may weep stoic tears to it.
My favourite of all the tracks is «Χαῖρε, Παρθένε Σουμελά», a psaltotragoudo, or chant-song, sung by Evgenia Symela Armeni, a Pontic hymn to the Mother of God of Soumela. It lifts the soul and shakes it to its depths like a gust of storm wind whose breath whispers that it was not all in vain and that love still glows in our hearts.
I thank Father Dionysios on my knees. Nothing is destroyed, everything remains in eternity.
Artist: π. Διονύσιος Ταμπάκης (Fr. Dionysios Tabakis)
Album: Paradise Metal
Label: Heat Crimes (Athens) / Elhellel (Thessaloniki)
Format: Cassette, digital
Released: April 2026
Recommended track: «Χαῖρε, Παρθένε Σουμελά» (feat. Evgenia Symela Armeni)
Listen: https://heatcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/paradise-metal
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