Power Metal Zine: Interview

 

People often say that you cannot measure passion. However, when you meet people devoted to what makes them happy and keep going through hardship and troubled waters, then you begin to understand that the real reason you cannot measure passion is because you simply cannot measure something that is infinite. Power Metal Zine has kept the flame of Heavy Metal in all its genres burning for more than three decades. Against the odds and through adversity, it has brought to light countless bands from the depths of the Greek underground scene.
It is, therefore, a great honour for Obscurus Rex to be interviewed by one of the true Metal believers!
Our vocalist, Manos, sat down with the legendary “The Omen” and talked about the band and our plans, the Heavy Metal scene and much more.
So, behold the translated interview – and for our Greek fans you can find the Greek text below.

 

When you’ve released a mini-album like “Stand Up and Be Counted“, the future looks nothing less than dynamic for the Athenian Prog Metallers OBSCURUS REX. But until they release their new material, we got in touch with their singer, Manos Xanthakis, to help us get to know the band better…

Power Metal Zine: Manos, give us a short bio of OBSCURUS REX…

Manos Xanthakis: Obscurus Rex was formed by Panos Karabelas fairly recently, in 2021 to be precise. From the beginning and in collaboration with Dimitris Sakkas (Dimons Creative Studios), who played the drums and took over mixing and mastering, various demos were written, and it was quickly decided that Obscurus Rex should become a proper band. I joined the band at the beginning of the following year and shortly after, we had finished recording the vocals. A few months after the end of the recordings, Kostas Mavrogiannis (Ocean’s Edge, ex-Silent Rage) came in on guitars, replacing Kimon Alex who had just left after the recordings were completed.

Zine: In what genre would you place the musical identity of OBSCURUS REX? What are your musical influences and your favorite bands?

Manos: The answer here is not that simple. The band is definitely metal and Panos’ influences—he’s responsible for the music and lyrics—contain many elements of classic heavy and prog metal, even some grunge elements. To be honest, I find it hard to say, for example, that it resembles something specific, but surely Type-O-Negative, Ozzy’s solo work, and Queensrÿche are among the bands that have influenced the sound a lot. As for me, I somewhat alter the overall style (haha) by bringing in influences from bands like Iron Maiden, Manowar, Helloween. Now, as for my favorite bands, they’re definitely the ones I mentioned, along with Accept, Slayer, Exodus, Angra, UDO, Running Wild, Sepultura, Gamma Ray, Beyond Twilight, Ayreon, and many more.

Zine: You recently released your first EP “Stand Up And Be Counted.” Give us more details?

Manos: Panos handled the music composition and lyrics, and of course played the bass, Dimitris Sakkas played the drums and handled the recording, and I definitely have to highlight the excellent work Kimon did on the guitars, especially the solos, while finally, the vocals were recorded by me in my home studio.

Zine: What is the lyrical theme of your songs?

Manos: The themes of the lyrics come from the hardships of life, like “Red” which is based on a true story with a tragic ending, while “Your Enemy Tonight” and “IT” have a more personal character.

Zine: What should we expect next from your band?

Manos: We’re already in the final stage of pre-production for our first LP album, where we will continue in the same style, only all the elements that exist in “Stand Up And Be Counted” will be strengthened to the fullest, and of course, we will try to achieve a better release in every aspect while some surprises are also to be expected!

Zine: What’s your opinion on the Greek Heavy Metal scene today?

Manos: I believe the scene is more active than ever. There are really a ton of bands covering the entire spectrum of heavy sound. Black, stoner, thrash, power, progressive, epic, djent, metalcore, hard rock, classic metal—honestly, I don’t remember such a variety of bands in the past with such a high level both in composition and performance. However, except for maybe 10 bands, all the rest are completely underground. This means they’re largely unknown to the public, and the reasons are more or less known. Since the majority of people don’t buy music anymore, either in digital or especially in physical form, there’s no possibility of making a living from it, and therefore no conditions for promoting both new and older bands are created. Those who once believed that everything would work just as effectively through social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., have been proven 100% wrong. So, everything that exists is promoted by the musicians themselves, and as you can imagine, the margins for that are limited. I’ll highlight once again the domestic music press, and I’m not talking about fanzines or webzines, but about the “well-known” ones who for decades consistently devalued every domestic effort in the worst possible way. For the sake of mockery, bashing, or to put it simply, because of their total inability to create anything musically worthwhile, they settled for belittling the work of those who could. The result was an entire generation of fans growing up thinking of local bands as something laughable, as if inspiration or performance ability has geographical boundaries. But it wasn’t just the devaluation of the musical work of most domestic bands, it was also their exclusion by any means possible from radio, television, and of course related publications that, in their own way, refused to cover or mention any related event. Over the last 7–10 years, this has changed to some extent because the collapse of record labels meant an automatic reduction in advertising revenue, and this forced them to turn to the local scene. But nowadays these publications are powerless against the new trends in media and are considered outdated, even criticized by a large part of the metal community. So what I believe is that the scene is strong and highly active but unfortunately with almost non-existent promotion in all areas.

Zine: What would you like Metal listeners to take from your music?

Manos: The music of Obscurus Rex is a journey of emotions and inner exploration. Our emotions are reflected in every transition and lyric, so I believe the listener will find many things they can relate to.

Zine: Which five bands, in your opinion, stand out today in the Greek Heavy Metal scene?

Manos: I’ll stick to the bands I’ve been listening to lately, because they are far more than five. For me, currently they are Sacred Outcry, Fortress Under Siege, Innerwish, Stray Gods, and Wardrum.

Zine: Which major international Metal band would you like to play live with?

Manos: Okay, I can’t say just one here, so: Accept, Judas Priest, Helloween, Manowar, Metallica, Megadeth, Angra, Iron Maiden.

Zine: What is your opinion on the use of the Internet today by the Metal audience as well as Metal bands? How much do you think it helps or not the whole scene?

Manos: Nowadays the internet is not just a way of promotion and information—it’s the only way. Having worked for many years in the media, I saw the trend of the public moving in this direction since the late ‘90s. What new technology offered us is the ability for immediate contact and promotion of our work. People can be informed almost in real-time about a new release, but the problem is that nowadays every band falls literally into an ocean of information and it’s not easy to stand out. Still, things are much better in this area compared to the past. What I personally don’t like is that the physical product is being “lost,” erasing the connection and personal bond with music, but the revival of vinyl clearly showed that people want this. Personally, I’m not a fan of vinyl records and would prefer we move toward a medium that offers better sound and is more durable and easy to transport. There are several new technologies that offer something like this, but I find it very difficult for them to be adopted by the remaining music industry. What I’m completely against are streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, etc. It feels so alien to me not to own the music you love and to have everything “tied” to some account.

Zine: What does the term “Heavy Metal” mean to OBSCURUS REX?

Manos: It’s the reason we exist, the dreams we had when we were kids, and what we now want to create. The rapid changes in rhythm, the heavy guitars, the melodic leads, the despair or aggression and melody in the vocals—all of these form a very intense musical landscape with elements I haven’t encountered in other musical genres.

Zine: Create your dream Metal supergroup with musicians from various international Metal bands?

Keyboards: Finn Zierler from Beyond Twilight and Zierler.
Guitars: Glenn Tipton (Judas Priest) and Wolf Hoffmann (Accept) or Dimebag Darrell (Pantera) and Gary Holt (Exodus, ex-Slayer)
Bass: Jeff Lords (Crimson Glory)
Drums: Dave Lombardo
Vocals: Midnight (Crimson Glory) or Eric Adams (Manowar) or Noora Louhimo (Battle Beast)
Of course, something tells me that all these people couldn’t even meet for coffee, let alone make music together (hahahaha), but hey, we said dream-team band…

Zine: We’ve reached the end, dear Manos… The closing words are yours…

Manos: Whoever’s looking for unpredictable music should check out “Stand Up And Be Counted” and they won’t be disappointed. Also, thank you very much Giorgos for all your efforts all these years, take care!

 

The EP is now available in Digital & CD form on Bandcamp!