“Μortality is my Dream…” a Garden of Gods Biography
Founded in western Athens during the much fruitful mid-Nineties Garden of Gods brand of melodic but aggressive and anthemic alike death/doom metal
comes from an era when a lot of quality extreme metal was born in Greece but since the networking habits of the Zeroes weren’t on full swing yet,
a lot of that music fell on deaf ears.
It all began when Andrew B. former guitarist of PHLEBOTOMY during the infamous “Dawn of Grief” 7” ep days parted ways with that band.
Despite having a 7” Ep out on George Osmak’s Molon Lave record label and cutting their teeth with fellow undergrounders on stage
at the also infamous “Αγκάθι” club, it soon became obvious that there wasn’t a unified musical vision among band members,
hence ON THORNS I LAY and GARDEN OF GODS were born out of PHLEBOTOMY’s demise.
So the first line-up of GARDEN OF GODS after an extensive rehearsal period, booked time at “Studio 5”
(WAMPYRINACHT,MEDIEVAL DEMON,OBSECRATION,INVOCATION,ASTARTE,DEMOGORGON,JACKAL’S TRUTH)
with sound engineer Gregory Papapanagiotou and recorded their first demo “Dreamy emotional ecstasy”.
The year was 1995 and the influences of the band had somehow diversified . That demo still sounds fresh, despite the very much “of its time”
production job. The separation of the instruments is pretty great and the inspired guitarwork by Andrew Bereris,
as well as the bouncy bass lines by Andrew Petsas raised some eyebrows.
Session vocals were provided by Stefanos Kintzoglou of PARALYSIS/PHLEBOTOMY/ON THORNS I LAY fame and were suitably brutal.
The line-up was completed by Panos Papazoglou who had more of a punk sensibility as a drummer,
but was still a capable drummer in an era when most of the underground Greek metal bands resorted in the Storm-studio drum programming magic
in order to complete their recordings.
While the demo garnered enthusiastic reviews and correspondence with a lot of underground bands and agents was established,
the band went silent and came with a changed line-up in 1999. Second demo “Upon the ethereal skies of Heaven” was recorded,
again at studio 5 and the style followed some of the gothic/doom/death trappings of that era.
It was the year 2000 when the band decided they wanted a stable vocalist that could invest time in the band and perform live with them.
Through mutual scene acquaintances they were introduced to Kostas and a two-year streak of live shows and much rehearsing followed.
Plans were made and songs were written, but the realities of life got in the middle and GoG never recorded anything with the last line-up.
Still the unreleased material presented herein is a nice testament of that line-up potential.
Garden of Gods’ fate was similar to the one of many other young musicians, who fell prey to the lack of infrastructure of the Greek music scene and lost their vitality somewhere along the way. However the music always has the ability to move and the music presented within their upcoming Cd
sure as hell does so…
Upcoming cd? Hell yes! We will release “Confines Of Mortality” in the few next months. It will include their 2 demos, plus 3 bonus live tracks! A must release for all doom/death and Greek metal scene’s die-hard fans!
