(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ April 2024 interview of Therthonax, the mainstay of the foundational Greek black metal band Kawir, with a focus on Kawir‘s newest album Kydoimos. The delay in presenting the interview is our fault, not the fault of Aleks or Therthonax.)
As we follow the world-wide cultural program of supporting the Hellenic Black Metal scene, it would be criminal negligence to skip the fresh release of Kawir, one of the oldest representatives of the Greek metal underground.
The band just passed its 30th anniversary in 2023, and Soulseller Records presented their ninth full-length album Kydoimos (Κυδοιμος) on April 19th. Named after the ancient demon of war, this album explores ancient ways of battle in many forms.
Once again Therthonax, Kawir’s only founding member still in the lineup, and his allies dive into the world of old myths and old black metal with zealous rage and determination.
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Hail Therthonax! How are you? What’s going on in your camp?
Hello, right now we are preparing to perform Kydoimos for the first time live in Berlin and Athens so we have a lot of rehearsals.
Your previous album Αδράστεια was released in 2019, then there was the EP War of the Giants in 2022. It’s hard to tell if something really slowed you down, so how was it? Did you work on this material with your normal pace?
Actually not, as most of the material at least in terms of compositions was conceived during the first phase of the covid pandemic at 2020. But apart from the pandemic, which slowed down and made things difficult for everyone, I also had to face a serious personal health issue, undergoing heart surgery, which of course made it impossible for us to record and finalize the album until recently.
Three members left the band after the release of Αδράστεια. Was it easy to find proper replacements and return back to regular activity?
As you can hear, we found even better musicians.
By the way, how regularly did you play live after the Αδράστεια release? And do you aim to promote Kydoimos with a serious tour? Is it worth it?
Actually we played only one show in Athens just a few days before the madness started. Well, a few days ago we just signed to Stagekult booking agency and we are planning to tour for Kydoimos.
Once more you invite Kawir’s listeners to the world of ancient Greek tradition and pagan beliefs. Was it easy to find new themes for your lyrics after eight full-length records?
It might sound a bit cliché but the springs of this tradition seem endless, so in those terms it’s easy to find the themes. The most difficult part is to be prepared or to choose the right time to express those themes artistically, as this requires a certain affinity with the chosen subject which comes not only with the intellectual contact but mainly from the lived experiences. So when the latter led us to a general war theme it was then easy to find the appropriate sub-themes within our tradition that would best express this idea.
How natural for you was this theme from the very beginning? And how widely were (and are) these themes from myth represented in Greece nowadays? I was born in USSR, and I remember well a few animations we had about Hercules, Teseus, Persesus, the Argonauts, and Prometheus, and that was really impressive, much better than Disney’s carnival of the absurd and globalization. Ancient Greek myths were way more well-known than Nordic ones here. And actually they were more natural things than the circus of comic-book super-heroes in fancy clothes.
Greek hymns can be considered global in these terms, as they are probably the most well-known mythological stories globally, and Greek mythology is probably the most well-documented one with countless books, articles, researches and all sorts of artistic retellings that still inspire people after thousands of years.
From one hand, being Greek, it was fairly easy and natural to know these myths, but the most difficult part is to be able to move beyond simply regarding them as “fairytales”, or as you mentioned globalized images of cartoonistic figures, and dive into the essence of those myths, which of course is related to ancient Greek religion and civilization in its whole. This is something that requires a lot of reading and overcoming opposing or hostile ideas that are put in our heads almost since birth, be it monotheism, or modernity.
Some of the stories you tell through Kawir’s lyrics are stories of violence, bloodshed, but also honour, valour and pride. Do you see black metal (Hellenic Black Metal) as a proper instrument to channel these themes?
Metal in general can be viewed as a great artistic form to express such themes and ideas, especially if we keep the subject in the realm of myth, as it can not only convey the different feelings, from lyricism to epicenes and brutality, that many times are required for such themes (and that is why so many more rock/metal bands have made such songs in relation to other music genres), but same as classical music it has a broader spectrum, or tools of expression to make this happen in such different and interesting ways. For us it is Black metal (in the general sense) that best suits our expressional needs without this signifying any intentional effort to maintain such a form.
How would you sum up Kawir’s formula nowadays? How much of Προς Κάβειρους (To Cavirs) is left in Kydoimos?
It’s always evolution my friend, but I think you can listen to some parts just a bit faster.
There are two guest-vocalists in Kydoimos – Jim Mutilator and Ilias Zervas. Jim is a well-known figure in Hellenic black metal, but what about Ilias?
Ilias is a tenor and we are friends so I proposed to him to make a guest and he said yes. With Jim… I know him from 1989 and I asked him to make a guest appearance to give the feeling of the ’90s, and he made it.
You are presented in quite a creepy mask on the Kydoimos artwork. Are they traditional masks or were they designed especially for this session?
These masks were provided to us for the session from Labrys Community, a group of local polytheists, and are used in a pagan festival they organize. They are handmade by members of the community and I would describe them as bestial as they are used to portray the animal characteristics of the followers of gods like Dionysus or Pan (satyrs, etc).
They suited our subject as this dark bestial visage can also portray the distortion of the human soul during war. One enters the battle as a man but after Kydoimos rises a beast comes out. It requires much more effort to return from beast to man than to fall… and we don’t limit this only to actual, physical war.
How important is visual image for you today? Would the band’s live shows work if you played them dressed in jeans and t-shirts for example?
I think it would still work, as the essence is found in the music, but many times the props help, both for us and the audience to put for a while modern reality aside and dive into the timeless reality of the subjects that are referenced in the music.
Kawir turned 30 in 2023, and through all these years you keep on following Hellenic spiritual and cultural traditions in your lyrics. Does this attitude help you to deal with the modern world? Or do you feel yourself quite comfortable here and don’t need a means to escape?
We don’t see it as a way for escapism but as a return to the timeless realities that still shape our world. In other terms, to the archetypal states of being, which no matter how the external world, usually artificially, changes, remain unchanged, defining the core essence of our human existence.
For example, and to refer to our new album, the Heracletian saying that “war is father of all” is a timeless reality, exceeding the mundane or contemporary wars we observe, or worse, suffer. There are many historical or modern themes that can express or invoke the feeling and images of battles and war but we believe that only myth can express the above or similar truths in their whole true meaning. Meanings that are found in the real Being, so by getting in touch with them, understanding and embracing them, we actually move close to our true self in contrast to escaping. The modern world and various modern views are actually the definition of escapism as they usually drive us further away from our true selves and from the essence of the real world, things that traditional societies usually aimed to have in balance.
What are your further plans for 2024?
As I said before we are planning to play everywhere in 2025, because the last show was just before the covid, and the first of May we have the presentation of the new album along with Ancient and Sad.
https://www.facebook.com/kawirofficial
https://kawir.bandcamp.com/album/war-of-the-giants
https://soulsellerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/kydoimos