Bastard Sword Premiere “Ghost in the Beehive” Video; Debut Album I out March 3
Athens-based heavy trio Bastard Sword release their debut album, I, through Sound Effect Records on March 3. The record follows only a five-song demo that includes three tracks recorded at their very first live performance together on Dec. 23, 2022 (there are also two rehearsal-room songs), so they are very much a new band, formed earlier last year at the whim of guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Achilles Charmpilas, who also engineered the recording and is known for his work in 2 by Bukowski, playing bass in Sun and the Wolf, the theatrical Dirty Granny Tales, and so on.
In classic I’m-a-producer-and-songwriter-and-I-have-demos-let’s-make-a-band-and-album fashion, the narrative has it that Charmpilas put Bastard Sword together with bassist Odysseas Tziritas and drummer/backing vocalist Akis Kapranos, who in addition to having been in Septicflesh and other more viscerally metal outfits is a film critic (he also apparently wrote for Metal Hammer, which is a nice line on the CV to be sure), and they began to put the record together from the songs he wrote, not playing live until that show that at least part of was recorded for the demo. Bastard Sword I, or just I if you’d like to keep it casual — I like to pretend every record named I is done so in homage to Goatsnake; care to join me? — comprises nine tracks and runs a humidly fuzzed 44 minutes, frontloaded with languid psychedelic doom and given in its later reaches to airier instrumentalist passages.
You can see the story below as told by the band, and that’s great — blessings and peace upon the narrative, as always; I include these things because it’s important to know what people are saying about their own work and how they’re saying it, both for now and posterity — but one of the key aspects of I is that its songs started out as instrumentals. Vocals aren’t an afterthought by any means, which is proved quickly by the if-Conan-wrote-“Black-Sabbath” vibe in aptly-titled opener “Il Gigante,” but knowing that helps one understand the construction of the album and its blend of increasing-tempo doom chicanery across “Il Gigante,” its six-minute leadoff salvo companion “Hierophant,” the increasingly rocking “Witching Brethren” and the brash shove of “Santeria de Sangre” on side A, as well as the interaction between a song like “Ghost in the Beehive” (premiering in the lyric video below), which takes the noddy progression of C.O.C.‘s “Albatross” and sets it to its own, well-established-by-then penchant for rolling, and the subsequent atmospheric drifter “Anthropocene,” which rises mostly but not completely instrumental with some duly Mediterranean scale work in its second half to be consuming and urgent while still slow in its march, and the spacious interlude “The Orbital Mechanist” that follows. Figuratively and literally in the case of the vinyl, I is a record with two sides.
Nothing wrong with that, and on a debut, it’s that much more encouraging that a band is looking to explore a range of ideas with Charmpilas‘ at root. The album is best summarized perhaps in its last two tracks, the fuzz-grooving penultimate cut “Tenbones,” which is a vocal highlight and finds Bastard Sword with a sound ready to stand alongside the likes of modern melodic heavybringers like Elephant Tree, and the keyboard-inclusive instrumental finisher “Tooth Rattler,” which takes the terrestrial vibe of “Tenbones” and launches it into the air, not quite leaving Earth’s atmosphere but still way up where the oxygen is light.
More even than “The Orbital Mechanist,” the closer is cinematic, and speaks maybe to some underlying ambition on the part of Charmpilas to manifest broader evocations moving forward, it also functions to create a kind of multi-avenued persona to Bastard Sword in the present, so that what starts out like it’s going to be a fairly predictable if well-executed stoner doom record in tone and spirit becomes something richer and more consuming. After the four songs on side A build to the outright blaster-Kyuss metalpunk shove of “Santeria de Sangre” — which might take its name from its solo in addition to its ritualistic lyrics — and Bastard Sword reaffirm their place in reverb-drenched cosmic lurch in “Ghost in the Beehive,” the transition into “Anthropocene” is stark but pulled off in a well-it’s-done-so-that’s-that unpretentious manner, even as it exponentially increases the scope of the entire LP, never mind the prospects for future growth on the part of the band.
And the safe bet is that whatever Bastard Sword do next — dare I predict: II? — it will be at least somewhat different since, you know, they’re a band now. Even if Charmpilas continues to write the material alone — and mind you I have no idea whether or not he will — his frame of mind will be changed since he knows both that he’s making a record to follow-up this one and even if only subconsciously considering the other players involved and what they’ll bring to it. This is to say, building an album over the course of months alone may have given Charmpilas the freedom to explore reaches he might not have had he set out with the strict intention to reside solely in a genre pocket of heavy, heady doom, but it’s inevitable that what comes after will be informed by these songs, even if that happens as a purposeful contrast. One doesn’t necessarily believe in authenticity as an ideal — you might as well chase gods — but the organic nature of I is crucial to how it unfolds, since it seems most like the placement of the material toward its various ends, be it the tempo-build of side A or side B’s ambient branchout after “Ghost in the Beehive” with “Tenbones” as a swinging, weighted, grounded counterpoint in conversation with “Witching Brethren” earlier, came after the fact of the songs themselves.
So there’s consciousness in how I is presented, but the songs were there first. And whether it’s “Tenbones” with its line of organ rolling alongside the riff or the way “Tooth Rattler” incorporates fuzz into its soundscaping, or the chugga-chug of in the verses of “Witching Brethren,” the darker cultish atmosphere that’s ultimately something of a misdirect for the audience in “Il Gigante,” or the extended solo that takes over “Hierophant” and doesn’t look back, there are any number of inclusions here that could be a model for Bastard Sword to work from. You could base a whole band’s sound on “Santeria de Sangre,” or “Ghost in the Beehive,” or even “The Orbital Mechanist” if you worked hard enough at it. That Bastard Sword don’t, at least not yet, gives I a formative but encouraging spirit. Wherever they might end up, they’re off to an auspicious, deceptively immersive start.
You’ll find “Ghost in the Beehive” on the player below, followed by the video credits and the aforementioned narrative, slightly edited for length — which given the thought-dump above feels like the pot calling the kettle black, but so it goes — as well as the preorder links, credits, etc. If it wasn’t made clear above, “Ghost in the Beehive” doesn’t encapsulate everything on offer throughout the album, but it does kick a good deal of ass, so it’s a representative sample just the same.
Please enjoy:
Bastard Sword, “Ghost in the Beehive” video premiere
More like this in our upcoming inaugural LP “Bastard Sword I”: https://bastardswordgr.bandcamp.com/album/bastard-sword-i
Sound Effect Records preorder: https://www.soundeffect-records.gr/bastard-sword
Bastard Sword shall appear live on March 19th, as part of Sound Effect Records’ anniversary festival. Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/552898130027799/
This video contains footage shot by Isidora Charmpila and Dimitris MacFeegle. They both bought expensive cameras and did their best to shoot great vids, only for us to waltz in and saturate the shit out of them – just like we do with our guitars. Our thoughts are with them, but we regret nothing.
This video additionally includes footage from “The Visitor” (1979) and “The Devils” (1971), two films that you really need to watch if you haven’t already. It goes without saying that we do not own the rights to any of that, so, remember all you humans and algorithms happily munching on this video: Snitches Get Stitches.
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At the start of 2022, a band was quietly born in a basement opposite the church of the Sacred Belt in Kypseli, Athens, Greece.
Achilles Charmpilas had just come out of two years stuck in the aforementioned basement, not doing gigs. The plan was to play and compose some new and adventurous music, learn new musical tricks and generally take the dry spell as an opportunity to reset, and get better at stuff he had been meaning to try out.
Well, at least in theory. What actually happened was that he simply reverted to his teen self, growing up in northern Greece in the 90s, vibing out on Sabbath, Motorhead, Hawkwind, Kyuss, Cathedral, Earth and Sleep.
In a few months, a torrent of music poured out of his fingers, travelled through a ridiculous array of distortion and fuzz pedals (a collection he has been building up since his time as a music instrument repair guy and touring bass player in Berlin), into an Orange and a Laney amp, out of a speaker, etcetera etcetera. You get the point. Before long, almost without realising, there it was. More than an album’s worth of material. Just hanging out on a hard drive. Waiting.
But, what to do with it? Achilles decided that a first step would be to get some outside perspective. In the end of the day, this might simply be a midlife crisis in the making, right? I mean, who needs another derivative doomy band in 2022? Come on dude, get over yourself.
Achilles sent a demo to Yiannis from Sound Effect Records, with whom he had previously collaborated in 2 by bukowski’s last release to date, Her Kind Fight Everything. A few sweat soaked days later (waiting for a big review is the worst), Yiannis reached out. He dug it. What a relief. There were insightful and welcome notes and comments, but one stood out: “there are too many instrumental doomy bands out there, why don’t you try some vocals?” Achilles’ personal projects have been mostly instrumental for over 20 years. Singing? What fresh hell is this?
Enter Akis Kapranos, a fellow veteran musician, film and single-malt scotch buff. He had previously played with important bands of the original Black Metal scene, like Septic Flesh and Thou Art Lord. An offer was accepted between drinks, and that, as they say, was that. Last piece of the puzzle was the bass. Bass is important, Bastard Sword would need an outstanding player. Well, as it so happens, Achilles had been producing music with an Athens scene wunderkind named Odysseas Tziritas. Odysseas inexplicably took the bait and the three met in a derelict but historic rehearsal space in Exarchia and jammed out for a few magical hours.
It worked. It really worked. A couple of months later, the newly fangled psychedelic doom power trio played their first show to an amazing audience in a kick ass punk bar called Bad Tooth. That was it, there was proof. The band works. Let’s get out there and make some noise.
Although the band members have hundreds of shows under their collective belt, as of this writing they have only done one live recording and one show together. Next stop: Side Effects Festival @ Gagarin.
The upcoming album Bastard Sword I was recorded in a tiny basement over the period of 10 months. The initial demos with all instruments recorded by Achilles were used as the basis. Akis and Odysseas joined just in time to contribute to it, making the album finally sound like a real album.
Tracklist
1. Il Gigante (06:01)
2. Hierophant (06:14)
3. Witching Brethren (04:58)
4. Santeria de Sangre (04:12)
5. Ghost in the Beehive (05:47)
6. Anthropocene (06:32)
7. The Orbital Mechanist (01:51)
8. Tenbones (03:44)
9. Tooth Rattler (04:55)
Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Achilles Charmpilas @ Sacred Belt Studios
Cover art by Valbona Canaku
Photography by Isidora Charmpila
Mastered by Kostas Ekelon
Bastard Sword are:
Achilles Charmpilas (vocals / guitars / synths / engineering)
Akis Kapranos (drums / backing vocals)
Odysseas Tziritas (bass)
Sound Effect Records on Facebook
Tags: Athens, Bastard Sword, Bastard Sword I, Greece, I, Sound Effect Records
