Thou Art Lord
Eosforos

In the unlikely event that you encounter an alien and they ask you what Greek black metal is, you should play them this album.

Imagine the scene: you are walking through the streets of your city when suddenly you see a flying pyramid materialize (it's well known that respectable aliens, especially those who read Debaser reviews, exclusively pilot flying pyramids), after a brief acrobatic evolution in the air, it parks, and from a hieroglyphic door emerges the astral pilot, who casually approaches you and asks what Hellenic black metal is. You start telling them the whole history of Rotting Christ, Necromantia, Nightfall, and then Varathron... but the alien is in a hurry because they've left the pyramid in a third-row parking space. So you break the hesitation and give them the vinyl of “Eosforos” that you have with you (imagine you have a magical backpack where you can fit everything you own, including the selfie stick your second cousin gifted you and the Ilaria Salis action figure, after all, we are still on Debaser) and tell them to listen to it while returning home and stuck in traffic at the junction between Sirius A and Sirius B.

Don't be surprised if in the evening they telepathically call you to tell you that Greek black metal resembles no other type of black metal, never and then never to the Norwegian kind, and that it's so direct and martial, striking from start to finish, constantly, with that phalanx cadence that would make Leonidas happy in the adaptation of 300. Moreover, it has that warm and Mediterranean sulfur aftertaste, the antithesis of the icy fjord gusts (is that even a thing?) measured at subzero temperatures and a production made in your seventeen-year-old friend's igloo and funded by the Norwegian welfare state. In Greece, everything is paid for (thanks for existing, EU!) and moreover, the musicians don't paint their faces like depressed pandas!

In fact, Necromayhem, Magus Wampyr Daoloth, and Gothmog don't paint their faces and didn't even do so in 1994 when they debuted with this side project. It must be said that the first two shady figures are no other than the minds behind Rotting Christ and Necromantia respectively, namely the cornerstones of the small yet very valid Athenian black scene.

Thou Art Lord was therefore born as a vent to the main bands, in which sound experiments were concentrated, while as you can hear in this album, experiments are banned and the sound is so direct and codified as to represent the archetypical Hellenic black metal.

So much so that almost certainly on the alien's home planet known to you, when their friend asks them: “What's up with these Thou Art Lord?”, they will answer: “They’re Greek!”