Finally these Greeks succeeded in inking a record deal to release their debut album. 14 years of struggling and releasing demo (re-mastered or not) tapes, 'The Rough Path of Nihilism' is here. Expect all the doom aspects you know from the genre. Dark, atmospheric, obscure, slow, threatening riffs Swedish style (think Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus), background keyboards, emotional vocals and some progressive touches.
Besides Candlemass, Memento Mori and Memory Garden can also be added as influences. Angelos Loannidis, the vocalist does not only sing opera-like, but every now and then he sounds darker and lower. This makes the songs interesting and sees to it that it doesn't get boring. Of course the songs are rather long (not too long), but fortunately not all played slow, in several songs the tempo goes up to introduce the necessary variation. Take for example the rather up-tempo song "Mr Holy", it starts very atmospheric and the guitar riff is very strong. The musicianship of the several members is good and the songs have rather technical passages, you could call that progressive (but not in a Dream Theater way).
Nice debut, you can hear that the band has lots of years experience and that the songs are not written within a day. I can not predict whether or not they succeed to breaking through in the doom genre, but for doom fans this is certainly a band that will fit in the collection between the albums of Candlemass's Chapter VI and Solitude Aeturnus.
Listen to "Queen of Doom" and "Empty Eyes and Blackened Hearts" on their MySpace and if you like what you hear, buy it.
