Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 06:21 PM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Doom
Country: Greece
Label: No Remorse Records
Year: 2022
C’mon guys there’s The Temple in Thessaloniki and then there’s Doomocracy from Crete among others here in Greece and I wonder what the Hell is going in our 300/365 days of sun country! What a huge album is this? In a sub-genre in which everyone is recycling its tears and sorrows with Candlemass sweat and Black Sabbath riffs for years Doomocracy are giving a new breed to Doom. I know and you should remember well too, that whoever became a man (or woman) in the 90’s, have built some strong foundations with the music he/she loves, built in underground shadows and experimentation. Yes the glory and spotlight years where already fare gone in 1993 and in the whole new decade the new generation had to evolve and to try new things in order to survive. And Doomocracy here are doing the same thing, they dive into their influences and their teenage idols (but not only them) and filter damn so well the elements that inspire them and give us an almost perfect result. Probably me too feel so comfortable to hear things that I love and own in my discotheque given under a new prism and blended so well with a plethora of riffs and a mourning aura haunting the atmosphere. No there’s no doom elements, just for the sake of it or to give an extra cult status in their music, as so may out there are doing nowadays. Doomocracy breath Doom and are 100% defenders of Doom faith but also 100% Progressive! Solitude Aeternus, Memento Mori, Morgan’s Lefay, Candlemass and early Queesnryche are on the menu…just brilliantly given with extra doses of personality. But also Conception, Psychotic Waltz and King Diamond (!) as for the way they used some choir and piano parts and a speech excellent in their storytelling. The band has a solid steady line up all these 11 years of their existence and the five year gap since their previous ‘Visions & Creatures Of Imagination’, seemed like forever before “Unorthodox”. I thought that they had the momentum to create a big fanned and probably should hurry up things and release an album earlier, but wisely the quintet chose to bet their money on quality…Lyrically speaking the new album is a concept one; a brave decision to take that may turn into a trap if you don’t have a strong story or catchy verses. But the Cretans are on fire…they look back to October 10, 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII decided to change the calendar. So the story takes to five days before and four days after 10.10.1582. As the Pope removed these ten days from the calendar calculation just like that with a swipe of a hand, as he wanted to align the Julian calendar used up to that point with the solar year by eliminating the ten days. Since then, the Gregorian calendar, with an average of 365.2425 days per calendar year, has been the norm in Europe. However, the days of his conversion have raised many questions since then. The world stood still. And Doomocracy reminds us the story or for most I guess tells it for the first time. Just consider that October 4th, 1582 was followed by October 15th. Doomocracy begin to narrate us their version of what happened in these days in ‘Unorthodox’. The added progressive elements are perfectly mixed with the epic Doom the quintet have offered us in their previous works. Recorded with Fotis Benardo, Angelos Karatzas and Aris Karatzas at Devasoundz Studios in Athens and with Giannis Pratikakis at Groove Studios in Heraklion, Crete, by Simon Johansson (Memory Garden, Wolf) and Mike Wead (King Diamond) mixed and mastered in Stockholm’s “SolnaSound Studios”, Doomocracy’s ‘Unorthodox’ is probably their magnus opus and one of the best albums of the year.
