It was Kalozimis who started the band. He played the bass for Horrified, another local Death Metal band of Maroussi but they kicked him out... not sure why. They told him it was because he wasn't improving as a bass player. The truth is, his playing kicked serious ass and he knew how to write a good song, a trick none of the members of Horrified ever mastered. And he used to be good friends with all the guys from Horrified. They actually kinda looked up on him, when I first met them all.  My best guess is, they had an ideological problem. See, Kalozimis, was a faschist. I bet he must be a cop now, if he doesn't still work as a security guard for that rich motherfucker who owns the Athens' Medical Center (one of the most expensive private clinics in town). Of course, with the possible exception of Stelllakis, the drummer, none of the members of Horrified had ever made any political thoughts deeper than "if I was a rich kid". Which a couple of them actually were. But, you see, that was the underground of the late eighties/early nineties. They were all liberals. My ass.

So Kalozimis' ass was kicked out of the band.

And he got so pissed... Boy was he pissed.

Then one day, he told me:

"I 'm going to make a band to fuck Horrified. Are you in?"

I was playing the guitar, back then. I still consider it one of my darkest moments. I 'm a lousy guitarist. Always have been, always will be. I have a really good right hand, so I can play them riffs heavy and fast like anyone, but my left hand is simply useless. This still holds true today, by the way. But a drummer is a right-handed animal... except if he's left-handed. Anyway, you get my gist and I 'm digressing. Back then I hadn't yet realised. So I said "Yeah". Kalozimis had recruited Kostas "Indian" Orditis to play the drums and Jim Sivenas for the vocals and we were sort of ready to go. And so the band was born.

We were going to be called Mescherschmidt.

Yeah. The German fighter-bombers from WWII.

Well, they were superior than anything else flying back then. A real killer machine. And anyway, Motorhead used them in the art of one of their best ever albums' cover ("It's a bombah... it's a bombah-it'sabombah-ahrg-ahrg"). So it should be OK. I mean, politically speaking. From the vantage point of the average metallhead.

Eventually we were forced to change the name to "Altar". According to Indian, it was the name of some demon of hell (it wouldn't be a demon of anything else, I suppose). But it was also cool sounding and short and OK overall. And that was the name we appeared under on stage for the first time.

 Before that, we had to write songs, learn to play them and find a new singer, 'cause Sivenas deserted us, the little whimp. And of course, we needed a second guitar.

We found Kostas, nicknamed "The Tall One", 'cause he was indeed, and we already had two more Kostases on the band (Kalozimis is his last name, Kostas his first one). The other two were also tall, compared to me at least, but the tall guy was really tall and skinny. He was into Rory Gallagher and all that ancient shit a lot, so it's a bit of a mystery to me why, or better, how, he stayed with us all the time he did. He played OK, but not for an aspiring Death Metal band, you know?

We asked Tripsas if he would sing and he said yes, which was a mixed blessing. For one thing, he was very popular with the girls. For another, he was very unpopular with me. But we sort of got on, ignoring each other for the good of the band.

We started rehearsing some songs in a studio in downtown Athens, owned by an old fuck who was also half the owner of a record company called "Molon Lave Records". I didn't like his face, but I pittied him when his partner run away with the money and left him with the IOUs to sort out.

First time we played, was in Maroussi. But of course. Maroussi was the suburb all the others lived in. I had to climb down from my mountain, but there weren't many places to play up there, so I didn't complain. Maroussi was the home of a plethora of metal bands, most of them on the side of Thrash/Death, that was on its' heyday at the time. I remember the ones I knew members of.. Brain Damage, Moribund, Mortal Pain and of course Horrified. And there were some punk bands too, like Adidrastiki Neolaia... no, don't look it up in the dictionary. It means "Reactionary Youth". We used to be best friends with the bass not-player and the singer, so it was all fun and games until the first gig.

I can't remember who had the whole thing organised. I think Kalozimis took the permission from the school board to let us use the theather and then we photocopied the poster and stuck it here and there with zelotape, of course all that after we had notified the other bands who were going to play. There were some good names too. Epidemic, Septicemia and Acid Death are still well -remembered members of the underground scene of the time. Acid Death are still around and the twins from Septicemia have joined Horrified since. And we even called Horrified, who accpeted, of course. There were also a couple less known groups, Malicioius Dead and Nordor and I think I 'm not missing on anyone. Of course, since it was our first gig, in our turf, we were going to be the headliners. Clever idea. We were going to play last of seven.

It went OK, for a first time. I did my little number, jumping down from the stage still playing, and all the others were glued to their places, sweating cold sweat and trembling with stagefright. But it was fun.

The first thing that became apparent, was that we needed to make some changes. First, we needed a new guitar player, 'cause Kostas, the Tall One, abandoned us. Then, we needed a new singer, 'cause John, the asshole, abandoned us too.

I rose to the second challenge. I was almost a couple of years into my initiation to Bathory and Quorthons' vocal style had deeply shocked me. I had never heard anyone sing quite like that before, so I decided to give it a try myself. A few years later (that 'd be a few years before present time) every band had singers who sang like that, but back then it was still fresh stuff. All I really had to do was scream a few verses from "Massacre" to Kalozimis and he instantly was all chuckles and grins and going "hey, Stathis (that's me) can sing". And I was the new singer.

Now we needed someone who really knew how to play the six-stringer.

We weren't lucky.

We found Spithas (greek for Spark, meaning "his wit is quick as a spark, only not"). A really cool guy who owned his own label specialised in Death Metal, what a coincidence. He had just cut Horrifieds' first album, which was the reason why that album never saw the light of disc-store shelves. He also had a reputation for having fucked a dog, once, and for being really good at full-contact sports. I never found out about the latter, but he admitted openly to the former. He was the worse guitarist I 've ever heard. Even worse than myself and that's really hard to come by, believe me. He was really bad.

 Our next gig, was going to be a big one. The guy who owned that studio we were rehearsing in, and his partner who had not yet robbed him and ran away, were organizing a really huge event. It was going to be the first Greek Metal festival, with sixty bands from all the spectrum of what we were used to call Metal back in the day, ten bands playing each day. And we wanted in.

We had to pay.

A hunderd thousand drachmas. That was not too much, but we had to pay. I mean, whatta ripoff. They told us it was to cover the expenses of the video taping and recording of our own show, but come on. It was a rip off. Blackmail. We wanted to play and there were bands there who were a lot worse than us. But nobody knew us, so.. yeah, we coughed up.

The concert was... um... well... We were the third band to play on the second day, after Horrified and an other band called Necropsy, who, for some reason, changed their name afterwards. We had... let me see... four songs we had rehearsed to the point we could perform them satisfyingly on stage. "The Song of the Trees", was about someones' encounter with Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Forest with a Thousand Young according to the Cthulu Mythos that I was deep into at the time. That was our greatest hit and people actually came and asked us about "that song you played, the first one, with the beat". It made me feel a tiny bit like Black Sabbath must have felt when people asked them about their namesake song (and the one that started it all.. and I do mean all). Then there was "Gibberish", with a riff we had stolen from a DRI piece and lyrics that went "Kill the teachers/Burn their books/ Hang the butchers/ From their hooks/" and "(blah blah blah) death/ Kiss your lips and breathe your breath". Ah. These were the days. "Head like a Machine" was my attempt at writing and singing something vaguely Motorheadian, but the music was cool. Kalozimis had written it, of course. I 'm telling you, he really had it. He could really write songs, real songs. Not just "Bungha bungha argh argh weeeow next". Real songs.  I can remember him composing and practising with his bass, a piece-of-shit Yamaha that was no good for an oar, plugged into a burned-out amp through an Envelope and an Overdrive effects. These were single-effect boxes, mind you. We didn't have the money for the fanciest stuff going around the market, that the better-off bands stepped on and anyway even they didn't have the digital multi-effects of today. And he made it all sound like the next generation of Noise. "The Black King" was from a dream I had seen and the lyrics, just as the music, were not at their best. We were just looking for a fourth song to play, to fill up the time and we couldn't come up with anything better at the short time between being accepted (paying for) to the festival and playing there.

I 'd like to bore you with the details of the soundcheck. OK, I won't. Oh, come on, just one thing. Spithas wasn't with us during the check. I rehearsed his part and we had the sound engineer turn his volume lower than the bass' level. Yes, it was harsh. But the guy really sucked. We actually saved him from the embarassement of having been heard playing in front of all those people. We had managed to find a second guitarist, just for the gig. Romanos. He was just so out of the spirit of the band. He wore snakeskin boots. I mean, really. And he listened to fucking Motley Crue, for fucksake. But he had spent some time abroad, allegedly studying at the Berkeley music college, so he would be at least marginally able to contribute to our sound, on stage. We were desperate. I listen to that old tape I got from that time and it's so fucking obvious how the band is just five people on stage trying to cluster around the concept of "ok, now the other one, the one that goes dan daaan... hey, Stathis, how 'd you call that one?".

But the gig was really good. I mean, it felt that way. OK, so I had pissed my self dead by the time I got on stage, and of course I moshed my head odd before, with the shit Horrified played. Hey, any shit is good mosh shit when you 're working yourself to an anti-stagefright frenzy. And I was.

I got on the stage and there was this smokescreen effect and lights, as a friendly gesture from Molon Lave for all the groups playing (and paying). When the smoke cleared, someone behind me started making noise and it was good noise. And I looked at the faces of the people under the stage and I saw sober, austere faces of moshers waiting for us to screw up, their arms crossed and with a look on their face that said "if you don't play, I 'm going to boo you". Hah. Boo me? Royt! Argh!

And I felt something I 've never felt before in my whole fucking life. Ever since, I 've only felt it rarlely, at nights, on the streets, when I was a sex sign flashing with she-malian glamour. Up on that stage, I was feeling like everything was exactly the way it was fucking supposed to be. Everything was just right. I was the front fucking man, I was leading the band, and I was going to give a hell of a fucking show and leave everyone something to remember.

I 'll be damned, but so I did.

The moshers moshed and the poshers poshed and there was much rejoicement. If you look at the video of the gig, you 'll see me, hopping up and down on the stage, going from one end to the other, banging my head and anything else that could be banged and screaming at the end of my lungs. And glaring at people.

Later, the guy from Metal Hammer, who was covering the nights' concert, wrote, I 'm quoting from my memory, but I 've like, studied the piece thoroughly a hundred times over, to be certain I wasn't missing something, "Next, Altar came on stage. They had a singer who actually moved a bit on the stage and was glaring at everyone with a paranoid look. Musically, they weren't really very impressive, but I believe it's still early, we should wait and see".

It was a good comment, compared to the shit they wrote for other bands. And that was still only our second concert. Hey, success was banging on our door. Next was Hammersmith Odeon and a world tourney. Heh. Right. But we 'd done it. We had delivered.

Or so we thought, until we listened to the tape.

It was awful.

"Not really very impressive" my ass. We sucked.

But what did you expect.

I don't know what you expected, but the first thing we did, was show Spithas the door. Romanos wasn't going to stay with us anyway. He had an urgent appointment with a snakeskin-polish dealer, I think. Anyway, we were guitar-less once more.

Then we found the evil twins. Bill and Chris.

I can't remember how the hell we found them exactly. Maybe by an ad in Metal Hammer, maybe it was someone from Horrified who knew them. Can't bet on it. Anyway, these guys, meant business. Well, it wasn't the best business in town, but it sure was dedicated, single-mindedly Thrash/Death business. They knew the music and they knew what to do to play it. They stayed with us until we split.

The fiasco with Molon Lave followed close behind the festival, so now we had to find a new place to rehearse. I mean, talk about bad luck. We found the guitar players but we lost the studio. Bah.

Then Zois, an old friend of Kalozimis started his own business and since he was a sound engineer, whaddaya know. He started a rehearsing/recording studio. And it was right in the centre of Maroussi. A drag for Bill and Chris, who had to come over from the other side of town, Nicea.

We did four more concerts after that, before final disaster struck its' meticulously planned fatal strokes.

The first one, was at yet another school theater, this time at Kifissia. I hold a memory of that day dear. A guy from one of the other bands came and told me "hey, Stathis, you have a fucking great voice, it's just like Bathory". And I made best friends with the singer from Malicious Dead, when, in the heat of the moment, I climbed on the stage and instead of another dive, I grabbed him by the waist and held him high while he sang. I can't remember all the other bands though. One was Malicious Dead of course, the other was "Apolitisti" (Uncivilised) another band with members from Maroussi, playing hardcore punk. And, I think the guy who payed my vocal skills the ultimate compliment was from Nekriki Sigi (freely treanslatable as "Dead Silent") also punk/hardcore band. This time we played a lot better than in the festival, we had some friends in the audience but also some people who didn't know us and we were beginning to lift off. 

Next in line, was a mini-festival organised by Zois' studio, in a park in Maroussi. Malicious Dead were playing again, now as "Murthielagos Rampante" (Spanish for "Galloping Bat", they were going through some sort of phase). So were Adidrastiki Neolaia and more bands who didn't have much to do with us. We had the gig taped by my girlfriend at the time, Irene, with a walkman-recorder. Har har. But you can still hear me delivering some of my best vocals ever on our brand new hit, dedicated live to Bathory and called "Riding the Breath of Hades". Only I thought it was pronounced "Hay-dees". Not that you can really make it out. I could have as well been singing in tongues. Which of course I did when I couldn't remember the next lyrics on time. We had a new song too, by Bill, but it wasn't very good.

After that, came the really big test.

I mean, up to then, we 've been playing in places close to Maroussi, where a lot of our friends could come and see us and support us, as they invariably did. Even in Molon Laves' festival there were some of them in the crowd. But now, we were invited to play in the far end of the city, in Nicaea, where Bill and Chris lived. Only, they didn't have as many friends there, 'cause it's a bigger place than Maroussi. And we had been playing, all five, together for a good deal of time, enough to get to know how to do it correctly. I mean, we were working as a unit and all, you know. So, if we weren't really appreciated by the audience, it wouldn't be their fault. It would just be us. But if they liked us, we could be certain we were doing fine.

The headlining band, were "Tabula Rasa". They were stars, sort of, 'cause they had this song called "Christina" from their demo, which really kicked ass. It even played on the radio, of course not on mainstream shows, but it was a fixation in all the parties I went, as I had observed. They were just hard rockers, really, but they really rocked. The other band, that would open, were Social Disease. Good, decent, old-school thrashers. They weren't really known yet. Compared to them, we were fucking veterans, but they were really nice kiddos.

We met them all in the place the gig was going to happen, some sort of theater that belonged to a cultural group of Pontiac refugees, who are numerous in Greece. We had a new song. I had just broken up with Irene, and I so wanted to cry about it, so it got called "The Sun Now's Gone". It wasn't your typical Death Metal lyrics, but then, neither was the music typical Death Metal. I believe Kalozimis was begining to really mature as a composer. He had written some really crazy, depressed riffs for that one, more appropriate to Black Sabbath on a bad trip with speed. Anyway, it was beginning to dawn upon us that we weren't actually playing "Death Metal" any more, if we ever had. Bill had printed some fliers for our upcoming (well, so we thought it was) demo and he had called us a "progressive Death/Thrash Metal band", but that was only conveying the loss of words at which we were to describe our music. It was really Black Metal, of the Mayhem/Immortal era we were playing, but we didn't know it yet. It was still a couple of years before everybody hopped in on that particular bandwagon and the term hadn't really caught on yet. Black Metal, back then, was what Venom were playing -and Bathory, of course. And we didn't think we sounded like them. Well, our riffs were basically very classical Metal in concept, only played a lot faster and harder than, say, Judas Priest or Accept. My vocals should have given us a hint, but as I said, there weren't many singers like that going around yet. Oh, you probably think I 'm just flattering myself. Well, I am, but that's not all. It was really a new idea, then, to sing like that. Death Metallers were going for brutal, deep, low-pitched vocals. I was singing in a feral, evil, frozen voice (yeah, just like Bathory, done that), in a really high pitch. It was hard too, I was obviously fucking my voice up. I kept missing a rehearsal every month, 'cause my voice closed and I couldn't sing if I couldn't reach the higher notes (oh, hey, did I mention I have a three-octave range? It's really important, yeah, like, cool man. When the band split, I had lost at least half of that too). But we couldn't see into the future far enough to know what the new wave of Greek Heavy Metal would bring, right? Damn right, otherwise we wouldn't have split.

The concert in Nicea was a blast. It really proved what we hoped it would prove, that we were really able to play. Heck, someone even payed me a compliment on my guitar playing (I was fucking around with Bills' guitar and one of the kids from Social Disease told me "you must be the guitarist eh?", which was fervently, and hastily, denied by everybody else and me too. The Social Diseaser then commented "shit, if you play like that, I can imagine what the others play like". Poor kid). But the real hit was, of course, the actual number. Social Disease were a bit numb on the stage, it being their first time and all, so the audience was like, cool when we climbed on. Then we started with "Song of the Trees". And, I swear to all gods and goddesses, I 'll never know what got into them. The very moment we started, but with the first fucking notes of the song, I saw the front rows going like, BANG BANG BANG, up and down, up and down, it was like that video from AC/DC, where everybody is headbanging and then there's a head rolling on stage. It was crazy. They fucking scared me. I was blinded by the light falling on my eyes from the spotlights, so I could only see the front rows and Kalozimis wasn't even looking, but Bill was and he told me he could see the whole fucking room going gaga, up and down, jumping and stampeding. Man, it was up there in my best experiences in life, it was exactly like the best sex I ever had. No, better, 'cause I haven't yet had my best sex, I hope?

There were some three hundred people in that room that night. One of them was the bass player of one of the worse, but better known Greek thrash bands, Flames. Bill knew him and we had chatted a bit, and after the show he came and told us "Guys, you were fucking great" and all that and I wasn't sure he wasn't just saying it, so I asked Bill if he could see him during the show. He told me "of course, didn't you see a mass of hair touching the ceiling?". The guy was tall, really, and his hair was hanging lower than his ass. There was someone who told Chris "That's what I call a band", he was talking about Kalozimis and Indian, who were really looming over everybody else. And Kalozimis had let his hair grow really long too and he had this beard also, he looked like a fucking caveman, while Indian, well, we called him that for a reason and he was the other body builder of the band. The first being me, of course. That same guy actually told Chris something about me having a very good back, 'cause he had climbed on the stage to dive, after I had thrown my blouse away. And then, there were the people asking us for our demo and when was it going to come out and there were a lot of them and they seemed pretty hungry for it, 'cause, man, they were screaming in my face, after we played "WHERE CAN I BUY THE DEMO", unless of course it was they had gone temporarily deaf which is always a good thing, so... No, really, I could see the people really had a great time. Three hundred fans having a hell of a mosh was an achievement for the kind of group we were in that time. I 've no idea how it is now, but then it was really good.

And better shit followed close.

Now that we had made ourselves a name, we opted for some even better company than Tabula Rasa. Our last ever gig, only we didn't know it was going to be the last, we played with the cream of the underground. Of course, it wasn't exactly the way we 'd planned it, but... First of all, let me tell you about Bambis. Not my friend Bambis from Corfu, who is a great guy, but a stupid little spoiled brat who thought he was going to be very cool  organising gigs. Like, right. Great idea. So, in his great gig organiser mindframe, he told us he was going to invite Flames, Deus Ex Machina and Night Stalker, and us, to a concert. We told him to call Social Disease for the support. Flames would headline and, get a hold of that, the money would go to a good cause, it was going to be given to an orphanage. Well, we didn't bother to tell him he wasn't going to make a dime out of things like that, 'cause we figgured, little twat, you 'll learn the hard way, as we did, that that sort of shit doesn't pay you to do it, you pay it to do it. And then he had to go and fuck it all up. It was all his fault.

See, Flames had made the mistake to take some pictures of themselves, for an album of theirs, and on one of them pictures, Chris B.A. (like, har har) was holding his guitar, which had on it a sticker with a crooked cross. Oh, insolence!! I mean, as I said before, nobody had a problem when Motorhead did that, but everybody suddendly rememberd my ass and their liberal sensitivities, not in the order mentioned, and started calling the poor posering fuckers bloody faschists. Which they had no idea of how to be, of course. But anyway, Deus Ex Machina, admittedly the best ever stupid motherfuckers to kick ass on the Greek undergound, had built themselves a reputation of being a "true" underground band. They were punks and proud of it and we all know what happens when punk meets faschist, poser or not. Well, they told Bambis they were not going to play with Flames and he had to chose between one band or the other. Possibly, what they actually said was "oi, you little piece of shit, what do you think you 're doing, we ent playing with no faschists" or something along those lines, to which the little piece of shit responded by kissing their ass and promising he would undo his mistake. So he did, he called Flames and told them they couldn't play.  Like hell they could. They weren't the ones having the problem. But Deus Ex Machina were the big stars, and the cooler ones and Bambis decided he 'd better risk losing the trust of Chris B.A. and co. than of the stars of the underground. So we had a poster that said Flames were going to appear, but we had to announce that their appearance was cancelled. I made the announcement, when it was our turn to play. Kalozimis and the others had to make me swear that I wasn't going to start blathering about how it was all the stupid fault of Deus Ex Machina, so no blood was shed but I was furious. I really liked Deus's music, I still do, I had even met their ex-singer when I lived in the squatt, but that didn't necessarily leave me good impressions. Quite the contrary. Anyway, I didn't need to do anything.

Social Disease played first and warmed up the crowd well this time. There were lots of people too, more than in Nicea. There must have been some five hundred people in there. Then it was our turn and we kicked ass, but of course. Then it was Deus Ex Machina and the crowd started dispersing. Whaddaya know. They had come to listen to Metal and chew gum. And Deus, good though they are, and kick- assive, they 've never had the least thing to do with Metal. So people started leaking out. I felt only sorry for Argiris and the rest of Night Stalker who were really nice guys and also a great band, the first true stoner band I 've ever heard and that was before the time of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age. But, then again, that was the stone age.

And Bambis didn't make enough money to give to the orphanage after all. In fact, we made him give us the fifty thousand drachmas he had promised us, 'cause we were so pissed off at him and he had to pay the rest of what he owned to the equipement company out of his pocket, the little bastard. He had a deep pocket, the little bastard. Hah.

We used to fuck with his mind for a while after that, asking him to arrange some new concert 'cause we like, wanted to play, to which he always tried to find an actual serious excuse.

But who cares for the little piece of shit.

The band had just given its' last concert.

Indian was going to leave soon, 'cause he had received his call to the army. It's obligatory, in Greece. I had a leave thanks to my Uni in Corfu, but Indian didn't and neither did Kalozimis. His call was going to come too any moment, so we decided we should better hurry and record that bloody demo to be over with it. We had some good songs ready. The Song of the Trees, of course, Head Like a Machine, Riding the Breath of Hades and The Sun Now's Gone, plus Bills' Murder. Wow, five tracks. That'd be a hell of a demo.

Zois was a friend of Kalozimis, right? And we were the first band to ever rehearse in his studio, so he offered us to record and produce the thing for us, free. Free, do you understand? We 'd have to pay through the nose for anything decent otherwise. And we would have, 'cause we were really bent on publishing the fucking thing, otherwise people would had forgotten us by the time the rythm section would be back from their service.

So we camped into the studio and started recording. We had everything going fine. I did the vocals for all the tracks except "Sun Now's Gone" and the others did their own parts, except "Sun Now's Gone" needed a bit of reworking in the guitar department. Zois even gave us an umixed tape for our enjoyement. You know, as an ors-d'oeuvre. Then he started pestering Bill and Chris. No, mistake, sorry. He had already started busting their balls since before Nicea. I 've no idea why I let him. Oh, OK, it was because Kalozimis ran the band and he didn't know what to do, he didn't want to argue with his friend the big wuss. Zois played the guitar and he also thought he knew what Death Metal was supposed to sound like, so he started poking his nose in our actual music. He wrote a piece he wanted us to insert as an intro to "Song of the Trees", to which Bill and Chris turned their nose. Zois then started telling them shit like "you don't really study hard enough on your guitar, eh?" and stuff like that. Bill told me at some point he was not going to take it any longer and I really didn't know what to do, 'cause he was right. Kalozimis and Bill weren't the best match either, but they could work together and that's what was important. Not Zois. Still, in the end, when Zois stepped on Bills' toes once too many and Bill told him how fed up he was with Zois trying to interfere with our job, me, and Kalozimis, didn't take anyones' side. Which was stupid. And so fucking egoistic. All we could think was "Oh, Zois is our benefactor, he produced our demo for free, he did". We should have stuck with Bill. Since we sold him out, he did the right thing and quit. Chris quit too, 'cause he too was pissed off, only he was always the unseen force, you know, silent and all. So we found ourselves with no guitars to complete the demo.

We panicked.

The best  chance we had, was me. And that was no chance at all. I didn't even know the fucking songs, Riding the Breath and Sun Now's Gone, were written after I had took on the vocals. So, no chance there.

And then, Zois closed down the studio.

The little cunt had found a job at a TV channel and it had good money apparently. So he didn't need the studio and its' trouble any more. So he shat on it. And on us.

Get it?

First he played manager to us, then he scared off our guitarists, and then he left us hanging, in the middle of our crippled demo recordings.

Oh, no problem there. He took the tapes with him.

And vanished from the face of the earth.

Ho ho.

Nice, no?

Yeah. Indian left for his service within the month, as I remember. Then I had to go to Corfu for my exams (although why I did have to, was a bit vague). Kalozimis and I weren't even in the mood to start looking for replacements. I mean, we had just lost 3/5ths of the band. "A ha ha haa haaa!!!!!!!!!" I believe is the experssion to convey our feelings. And then, a couple of months later even Kalozimis had to leave 'cause it was his turn to go to the army.

I met Chris once or twice more, in a record shop or some metal club, I can't really remember. Well, there were no hard feelings of course, 'cause he's a good kid and he wouldn't hold my stupidity against me. I kept a bit of a phone contact with Bill. He actually called me to ask if I cared to do the vocals for his next band, since he was looking for exactly that kind of sound. Or so he said. It's a fact that I had just came out with my high heels and all and news travel fast. Especially when one particular ex-girlfriend of mine had designed the logo for Bills' new band. Anyway, I went to see him, all dressed up in my tacky every-day-queen stuff of those early out days. We still kept calling each other after that... uh, well, I did, 'cause I wanted a favor... but that's another story.

 

Oh, and... EPILOGUE:

The summer of '96, three years after the band split, I went to a new, big, Metal festival, this time with groups from abroad, mainly. The main attraction were Slayer and Motorhead, although Motorhead didn't play, but I don't think it had anything to do with their political beliefs clashing with those of Slayer. The festival was called "Rock of Godz". It was the first of several to follow. Later the festival was renamed to "Rockwave" and expanded to a three-day open air event with big names from different branches of what we have to assume is the Rock tree. Like, last year we had The Cure, only some fuck up didn't let the rest of the bands play and the year before that we had Megadeth and Judas Priest. And Nick Cave would have played, if it weren't for the summer rain. Names as big as those were pure science fiction at the time me and Altar climbed on stage to play our "Song of the Trees" for the first time. I 'm not exaggerating. There were very few metal concerts by international names in Greece before 1995. Iron Maiden had played at some point of their Seventh Son of a Seventh Son tour, and Manowar couldn't have given a huge concert anywhere else but here or in Germany, but that was it, really. Slayer? Right. What, Motorhead? Ho Ho Ho. So when they came for the first time, everybody flocked to the place.

Me and my friends, Spiros and Alekos from Corfu, got there in time for the second support group. A Greek band, by the name of Nightfall. Of course I knew Nightfall. They were the rising stars. They had good PR and a song called "Lesbian Show", but the video had no lesbians in it, duh. And guess what they played.

Well, they had a song that everybody kept telling us, for a while, that is until we split, how it sounded so much like "that song you played, the one with the beat". Of course I 'm not saying they ripped it off. Well, their Lefteris, or whatsisname, used to come to our shows when he was with Epidemic, but that doesn't really matter. I mean it. What counts is that they were playing the kind of shit we used to play, especially the kind of shit we had started to play when Kalozimis wrote the music for "Sun Now's Gone". It was our sound. OK, they were posers and they had no heart in them, but they were playing our music. Well, by then it was everywhere, Black Metal was the new thing and the Greek scene has since bred a very special and unique.. well, breed, of it. Which we could have been playing non-stop since the time of our first gig with Septicemia and Acid Death.

I was a bit wasted of course, and the sun was nasty that day.

I stood looking at the singer, doing his thing. It was a nice show.

And I was thinking.

Shit.

It shoud have been me up there.

It should have been us.

And we couldn't even make a comeback, even if Kalozimis and Indian could possibly be convinced to give it one more try. 'Cause, guess what. There's now a band called Altar, somewhere in Scandinavia. They play Black/Death and they 've already got several records.

We don't even have the name anymore.

 

 

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