We take a deep breath, right into the centre of our bodies. To that place where chakra meets chakra and flows into one another. There, we listen and feel a beat, a trance, a pulse that propels us forward, grows stronger, spreads out and, eventually, takes over not only the mind but also the body. Paradise Metal sends you on precisely this journey. The album by Dionysios Tabakis is a rebellion against the ordinary, the pulse of a timelessness that envelops you and, over the course of twelve tracks, takes you on a spiritual journey that repeatedly crosses the boundary into the other side, if only briefly. Small leaps from the sacred to the secular and back again.
The fact that Tabakis is a priest in the Orthodox Church and records his music entirely at home lends this exploration of boundaries a further dimension. Drawing on Byzantine music, he works with drones, microtonal intervals and a fretless electric guitar that barely behaves like a guitar anymore. On two tracks, Evgenia Symela Armenis’s Orthodox-trained voice also cuts through the music’s heaviness. Tabakis, however, does not turn this into a mere sacred exercise. His unorthodox way of playing with music and sound opens up something else: one feels the urge to dance – around a fire, within oneself or amidst a large community. One becomes one and then separates again, yet with greater insight than before. No wonder, then, that the album has long since sold out on Bandcamp. Heaven is calling!
