Much like the banner above, this project breaks the boundaries of The Corroseum's traditional focus some, but even more important than petty genre-snobbery is our love for dedicated and deep-diving, Country-specific Metal sites. Therefore, in our sisyphian (ha!) struggle to present you with trivia on every obscure Metal band on the planet, The Corroseum have teamed up with Greek Metal-maniac Johan Pettersson to build and host this humungous project. Take it away, Johan!
Warmest welcome to HELLENIC STEEL, an archive dedicated to documenting Greek and Cypriot metal with focus on the years 1980-2000. Here you will find band pages complete with biographies, discographies, cover art and photos. In addition, we will offer related articles, interviews and compilations, as well as an archive of fanzine scans if you wish to dig even further.
"Why Greece? And Cyprus...?!" - some might declaim. Well, there are a million good reasons to write about Hellenic metal. There's so much fantastic yet veritably unknown metal music hidden away in every corner of the Greek world that deserves to be documented and shared with a wider public - such as the English-speaking one - before it's too late. Since scoring a record deal in 1980s/1990s Greece (let alone Cyprus) was associated with major challenges, many of the finest releases of the era remain limited to decades-old demo tapes. Some of them digitized, others not. The result is a situation where a lot of excellent material has stayed relatively obscure, even to this day of convenient electronic accessibility.
Despite the disadvantageous situation of the past, it is worth pointing out that Greece became one of the prime strongholds of the true metal underground during the darkest years of the 1990s. No other country boasted such an impressive armada of bands, zines and enthusiasts keeping the flame of heavy metal not only burning brightly, but continually expanding its legacy with an impressively versatile catalogue encompassing almost every branch of the heavy metal tree. Moreover, the Greeks were quite successful in adding their own special character to each of these fields. The Hellenic black metal sound is of course the most well-known today, but let's not forget the unmistakably "Greek" variants of traditional heavy/power/epic metal. Please pardon the gross generalization, but it's as if Greeks musicians just "get" what classic heavy metal (80s style) is all about - it's essence and power is in their blood.
While the idea behind HELENIC STEEL is anything but modest, we humbly wish you to keep in mind that this is an ongoing project meant to be subsequently improved as more material is gathered and as time allows for further updates. Biographies will be updated, photos added, errors corrected, and so on. Please keep these words in mind before the criticism begins to strike down like a hailstorm over mount Ida. With that said, any form of constructive criticism is appreciated. And we're always looking for people who wish to contribute in one way or another - be it as writers (reviews, interviews, etc.), providers of information and/or contacts, and whatnot. Nothing is too small to be insignificant, as there are so many white spots to be plotted in our quest.
We hope you'll enjoy the stay and perhaps even discover something "new". And never forget:
"...for us the Metal is enough"!