Hellenic Metal

Greece Attacks was a double-LP compilation that was released in 1989 by greek FM Records. It featured 20 greek bands, most of them played traditional 80īs metal stuff. This compilation is nowadays very rare and hard to find. In the year 2004, Greek magazine Sound & Vision released a second compilation and called it Greece Attacks - The Next Assault. The compilation is made up of two CDīs and features 32 Greek bands, each band performs one song (more than 140 minutes of music!). This new compilation should represent a new generation of Greek metal bands of every metal kind. As I do not know how these bands were chosen to participate, I do not know exactly if they are representative for the Hellenic scene, concerning the quality of the music. Maybe there are some better bands somewhere which didnīt get the chance to participate... But if they put 32 bands into a compilation, the listener will surely get an imagination of the Greek scene, representative or not.

The first CD contains 16 bands, I will mention six of them, in my opinion the six best and most professional. Kinetic is the first good band, with The Realms Of Nightmare they give us a taste of their thrashy Death Metal. Shadows Dance perform Until The Young Whore Sings, which starts furiously and then turns into a symphonic, operatic direction, reminding Septic Flesh or Therion. Great song! Land Of Thorns of Sentinel starts with catchy guitars, but the singer is far away from the bandīs quality. This song is an example for many Power Metal bands from Greece and for some bands on this compilation. It makes absolutely no sense to form a Power Metal band featuring such average or bad vocals. Good vocals are much more important in the Power Metal genre than in Black or Death Metal. And I donīt know why some bands put some semi-ballads on this compilation, which is called Greece Attacks? How can you attack with a ballad? Greece has many of these bands, but only few good. My personal favourite on the first CD is Discoblood of Drunkard. They are mixing the music of early Sepultura (Beneath The Remains) with alcoholic lyrics of Tankard. The outcome is furious, old-school Thrash Metal, ideal for headbanging! Most brutal song is Dead Life from the Death/Grinders Kvazar. Last good song on CD 1 is Death Of Innocence from Semic Stains. Their modern Thrash Metal is shaking well the loudspeakers.

The second CD has much more good songs, it starts powerfully with Dol Ammad, Greeceīs spaciest electro-metal band. Rafferty Rules plays neo-Thrash Metal, not far away from bands like Machine Head. Their song Crushing Down kicks seriusly ass. The song from Orionīs Reign is a speedy, melodic instrumental, īcause the band had no singer at that time. Black Winterīs Hellenic War is a great piece of melodic Black Metal, much better than their demo material. Suffer In Silence perform The Snake Dance, a slow Death Metal song with a nice female refrain. Crossover participate with a song from their debut, World Crescendo. All The Way Down from Burn Out is a rocky Stoner Metal song with distorted vocals, not bad! Soulless presents us typical, but well-played Death Metal. Warcryīs song Lords Of War is kind of strange, īcause it mixes up brutal metal riffs, with epic, Manowar-like refrains and lyrics, and atmospheric keyboards! Very unique style and it sounds pretty well! Black Fate perform No Mask, and with that good vocalist they have no reason to hide themselves behind masks. They play progressive Power Metal and deliver the best Power Metal on this compilation, due to the good vocals. Desolation is the most extreme band on CD 2, their song Cause Of Denial is pure Death/Grind, but the vocals could be more aggressive. Angels Under Glass is again a fine example, how a bad singer can completely destroy the good performance of the other musicians and the whole songwriting! Itīs a pity... Last song is Into The Core from Karma Violens. Itīs an aggressive mix of modern, catchy Thrash and Death Metal.

Conclusion: The Next Assault is indeed a nice collation of Greek bands. But due to the unsorted song order itīs primarily not easy to enjoy the songs. Power Metal songs are followed by Black Metal songs, which are followed by half-ballads, which are followed by Death or Thrash Metal songs. Too chaotic. The extreme metal fan will skip many songs and so will the tradional metal fan do, and nobody will enjoy the compilation. It would be better to divide the two CDs into the different genres of metal, so that every band should be followed, and could be compared to a similar other band. So every band can catch better the attention of the fan of the particular genre.

Written by Skariotis