From thrash to death to black, to the Cretan lute and to the Pythagorean Circle

As I was saying in the previous chapter regarding my path in the Greek underground, playing death metal with Sickness for about 7 years, without this being my only involvement with the extreme metal sound, since I listened, played and loved equally the early thrash, as well as the black metal that had already started since the early 80s as a rising force, without the term black metal having been introduced as a subgenre of metal music. The term Black Metal, began to be used by the great Venom with the release of the album of the same name in 1982, as well as by the characterization of the charismatic singer King Diamond describing the music of Mercyful Fate. There were many bands around the world that played this early raw thrash, such as Sarcofago, Sodom, Destruction, Hellhammer (later Celtic Frost), Kreator and many others, which was quite reminiscent of the ferocity and style of playing that we know today as black metal. This style, with obvious punk – garage – motorhead influences but also strongly enriched with the sound of NWOBHM, was essentially an evolution, combining the “dirty cheetah gas” playing of Motorhead with the melodies and lyricism that characterizes Iron Maiden, Angelwitch, Saxon, Judas Priest and other classic “bands” of the era, reaching the point where the term began to be officially established as the Black Metal that we know today, especially after the release of the giants Bathory’s first album in 1984, which is essentially the cornerstone of this exquisite music, although Venom were the first to use the term mainly due to the extreme satanic image and the lyrics that they used thematically, musically it was an extreme fast rock’n roll. So Bathory’s first album is what we call 100% Black Metal both in sound and lyrics, which has a special place in the hearts of all of us who love and play this particular music, because it is what we call “the base”. Now about how I started to change my playing and sound, as I mentioned before, doing a little recap here. Starting to learn guitar, I slowly went from Running Wild to Iced Earth, that is, I started to harden my playing based on my listening, evolving at the same time my technique from power – speed, to thrash/death and finally to black, since we are talking about the early 90s when most of the extreme sound releases were worth their money and more.

Let me tell you about the first albums of Morbid Angel, Malevolent Creation, Nocturnus, Massacra, Merciless, Immortal, Darkthrone, Mayhem (with Dead and not Attila you mean!!!), Marduk, Entombed, Edge of Sanity, Unleashed, Dismember, Grave, Burzum, Absu, Incantation, Asphyx, Immolation, Pestilence, Bolt Thrower, Dark Angel, Demolition Hammer, At the Gates, Morgoth, Emperor, Sacramentum, Dissection, Unanimated, Enthroned, Sabbat(Uk), The Crown, Ancient Rites, Impaled Nazarene, Death, Possessed, Dismember, Forbidden, God Dethroned, Infernal Majesty, Over Kill, Pestilence, Protector, Samael, Tiamat, Setherial, Seance, Throne of Ahaz, Vinterland, Aggressor and many more bands that I still listen to with great pleasure these first magical releases. Whatever came out until 1995 was a masterpiece! Later, thrash and death began to take what we call a downward trend, while black continued unabated and continues to flourish, with the exception of several exceptions, what we call mass bands, to this day, something that made me place it in a special place in my heart and in my life, constituting the support and the inner inexhaustible source of strength that makes me cope by overcoming the obstacles and adversities of life. The fact that I didn’t create any other band besides Sickness, or at least to be precise, I had created some projects in the black metal scene with some friends, but the obligations with my main band, which was Sickness at the time, as well as the need to go to my daily job in the morning to be able to make a living, didn’t leave me the necessary free time I needed so that I could be creative with my secondary musical bands and for this reason there was no further continuation in them.

The last band before I started to dabble with the Cretan lute and the traditional music of my special homeland of Crete, the island of the gods, was a melodic death-black band that we had formed with two friends from our neighborhood in Kato Patisia, Kostas on guitar and Giannis on drums with me on guitar and vocals, called Turned to Stone. The whole effort, although we had released three wild and melodic songs, lasted almost half a year in 2003, because I had also lost my enthusiasm for bands by then and generally it coincided with other changes that I wanted to make in my life, such as the fact that I had already been thinking since the beginning of 2000 of moving to Crete at some point, leaving behind the rot and noise of the globalized metropolis of Athens. I went through various stages on the guitar and I want to mention here at this point the fact that after the breakup of Turned to Stone, for a while I listened exclusively to classical music, trying to express that on the electric guitar. The following year, in 2004, I would change both my playing style and my instrument. From the electric guitar, I would move on to traditional instruments after a great love for the Cretan lute, and I say this because before I bought the lute, a friend had lent me a three-stringed tzoura, on which I would learn my first steps in Cretan songs and the traditional music of Greece in general, until the time came to acquire the long-desired lute and to which I dedicated myself body and soul for 17 whole years, moving permanently in 2006 to Rethymno, Crete, meeting and collaborating with musicians from the Cretan mainland, essentially realizing one of the dreams I had, that of becoming a lute player and playing at Cretan festivals and shops in Crete that played live music.

This involvement with tradition led me to travel to many islands of Greece playing the lute and sharing joy with ordinary people, something that fills me with gratitude for this entire period of searching and studying Greek traditional music. Although of course in my mind at least the electric guitar was a thing of the past (or so I thought), I had not stopped listening to rock and metal, arriving around the end of 2020, where the internal change happened again, giving me the need to play metal and specifically black metal again, but this time more mature at 43 years old, more settled and realizing having literally gone “through fire and iron” through the ups and downs of life, I realized the true value and the interiority and spirituality contained in genuine old-fashioned Black Metal and the great mental strength it gives to those who serve it with full awareness, love and respect for what it offers, I decided to create the musical group of my life, the “Pythagorean Circle” as another Phoenix reborn from its Ashes.

Once a Metalhead always a Metalhead.
Crhistos “Ancient Scholar” Tsichlas.