A bit like the lightning bolt on the cover of their self-titled album, this band struck unexpectedly and mercilessly. Although Black Sword Thunder Attack has been around for about twenty-five years, their debut album was not released until 2025. The mix of Warlord/Lordian Guard, Jex Thoth, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Quartz, and Glacier meant that the record immediately went into heavy rotation here. In fact, for me, it was one of the absolute highlights of the year. And although the band had a fairly anonymous run-up, I was apparently not the only one. I didn’t buy the record immediately after its release, but I should have, because it is now out of print and certain people are already selling the album for hefty sums on Discogs. This year, the band will also be hitting the stage and we will be hearing and seeing more of them, but so far, information about the band is scarce and there are not even any photos available. A conversation with bassist and founder Stelios sheds some light on how this fantastic album came about.
Hi Stelios, It is actually strange that for a true devotee of 80’s Heavy Metal I actually invite few such bands to be a part of these pages, but hereby: welcome! Let’s get started. Personally I don’t like questions that deal strictly with biographical topics, but in this particular case I am quite interested to learn a bit about your past activities as a band. As far as I was able to find out the band was founded around 1997, yet it took you about a quarter of a century to get in rolling properly with an EP in 2020 and now your debut LP earlier this year. What happened back in those early years?
The band formed in the small town of Kalabaka in central Greece by me and my best friend Chris during our high school years, indeed somewhere around late 90s. My later best man Marios on drums joined us a bit later. What happened back in those early years? As you can guess not much. Studies in other cities, jobs at various places, even military service (its obligate in Greece) in different periods of time didn’t allowed the band to work properly. But despite the band seemed non active we never stopped composing songs from time to time. Some demos recorded throughout these years, some still unreleased or even lost, some more songs stayed in progress. Because we didn’t had a singer I was doing the vocals, we wanted a cult 80’s voice no one had or a female vocalist … or nothing. So, we stayed with nothing. Our 2011 demo made a huge impact (I would say mostly outside Greece at first) but we had to wait some years for our next strike, when we all finally landed again back at our homeland, our little town Kalabaka. And then your next question happened…
Although a female vocalist is nothing unique in Heavy Metal, it still gives the music “something else”. Your singer, Mareike (sounds Belgian or Dutch by the way), hasn’t always been part of the band though. She first appeared on the 2-track promo from 2015. What made you switch to another vocalist and did you already have in mind to go with a female singer?
We actually didn’t made a switch on vocals. We just found the singer we always wanted. I will quote a part of your review here “it is hard to imagine the band started with bassist Stelios on vocal duties, the music truly seems to be made for Mareike’s voice”. You are more right than you think. This is the truth, the almost creepy truth. I used to imagine our songs with her voice (or a pretty similar voice), I’m pretty sure I listened these in my mind a thousand times, exactly like that, no matter I was singing and didn’t knew she actually exists, she was at elementary school when we were working on these songs. So this is the end of our story as a trio, we managed to find the voice we were always looking for exactly the time we landed back at our homeland and we found her there! This happened just before the 2015 promo, when Mareike put her first vocals for the band and yes, you were right again, her name has Dutch roots, she is actually half Greek half German.
Speaking of which, that 2015 demo had two tracks (‘Through The Fires Of Hell’ and ‘Don’t Hear The Sirens’) that both also appeared on the ‘March Of The Damned’ EP as well as on your recently released debut album. And over half of the tracks off that EP also re-appeared on the album. Are these songs so strongly tied together that you decided to put them on the album as well? Didn’t you have the urge to write new material?
The 2025 album is our first full-length. But it’s not only our first full-length. This album is our band through the years, where we present our songs exactly how we imagine them 15 or 20 years ago. The EP versions were O.K. but we weren’t 100% satisfied. I still can’t believe we released our first full length and ‘The Messenger’ (only appeared on the 2020 EP) track is not there. Every song is important to us, every song has its own history, no matter how it changed throughout the years or stayed the same, no matter if we really finished some of them just before the album release. Some more waiting to see the light of day for the very first time at a possible second album, some more are in progress. And for sure we keep composing new songs, we never stopped doing that.
In my review of the album I cited bands like Warlord/Lordian Guard, Glacier, Quartz, The Lord Weird Slough Feg and Jethro Tull as musical comparisons. That list could be much longer as it sounds so comfortably recognizable, but a slight progressiveness in the music can be traced as well as some catchy almost folky melodies. And of course powerful Heavy Metal. Do my musical parallels make any sense to you? And which ones would you make yourself if you had to explain it to someone?
I actually was amazed you mentioned specifically the ‘Stormwatch’ album of Jethro Tull. This is an album I love and, yes, I somehow understand why you mentioned this despite we didn’t had in mind this album or anything during the compositions or the recordings. We actually compose only what we feel, what we are, and we are vintage guys, used to worship only the 80’s metal stuff and then we moved back, to the 70s and 60s to find more music we are actually into. Old Greek music and medieval chants (hence the Warlord vibes, the late William J. Tsamis had Greek ancestors and was hardly influenced also) are part of our music history as persons and probably made an impact to our sound too. I liked that you mentioned both U.S. (Glacier) and European (Quartz) old bands, I think our music sound as a combination of these two scenes, more old U.S. metal musically and more European at the feeling. Despite I like Glacier, a U.S. band with deeper feeling at their music (like Omen or Iron Cross from Florida) could fit a bit better at the description, but I can’t complain.
I also wrote about the near-perfect production of the album. To quote myself: “smooth, organic and overall natural, the album is free from all too modern production possibilities, slightly rough but never raw”. Can you tell about the recording process? What exactly did you have in mind and how do you think it turned out?
We had exactly this in our mind, to sound like all this ‘progress’ in sounds and all these modern productions never happened because… actually never happened for us, we like music only the way it sounded in the past, we don’t ‘progress’ with the scene or whatever happening in the music industry the last many years, we have another idea for our band and sound. Maybe this will cost us at the market but our main goal is to listen our music the way we want and if anyone is into this he is welcome.
About the aesthetics then. It occurred to me that there were no pictures or images of any of you circulated on the internet, at least at first blush. Upon further inquiry I learned that you deliberately try to stay more or less anonymous or at least unrecognizable. What is the reason behind this? Do you like the idea of a bit of mystique and enigma?
Taking band photos never was a priority. We are not trying to hide ourselves that much, we are gorgeous anyway (at least the one of us… guess who), but it’s true we don’t want to be recognizable either, we don’t want our band to be like the tax papers with all our info inside, we actually hate giving all that information at the tax office and trying to avoid it (classic Greek, some would say…).
Does this also mean that Black Sword Thunder Attack is not a band we will see on stage anytime soon?
Next April we arranged a show at KEEP IT TRUE festival in Germany.
Other than your anonymity, based on the band name, album cover and song titles it is rather evident that you draw inspiration from the realm of swords-n-sorcery sort of fantasy. Yet, it doesn’t seem to be from the more usual Robert E. Howard-like muscular sword wielding stuff. Can you tell me something about where Black Sword Thunder Attack evolves around on a conceptual level?
It’s not the usual muscular swords n sorcery stuff indeed. We are actually more into the “darkness and light” themes, mysticism etc., mostly we add the lyrics that fits the feeling of the music so every song will become this that was meant to be and usually our music is way darker than the usual epic metal.
Personally I thought the cover of the ‘March Of The Damned’-EP was rather generic and didn’t do justice to the music. The simple but iconic cover of the album feels much feels much more in place and is a beautiful and powerful extension of the music. What was the idea behind the artwork for ‘Black Sword Thunder Attack’ and who realised it?
I think most people prefer the EP cover, seems more serious. But I like it also, this was our idea anyway from start to finish. We only have good ideas (that no one likes) but I’m with you, the album cover fits better. It’s so simple and powerful at the same time and looks like an album cover of a forgotten 1984 band. If I will remember to keep a copy I must place this at this section of my collection. The cover was made by Mars Triumph, he can draw way better that this, but we are happy he stayed at the simplicity we asked.
Greece, your native country, has a strong traditional Heavy Metal tradition. Not only because of some great bands, but it has always been widely known for having a huge audience interested in the genre. Reason why bands like Iced Earth recorded their first live album there and bands gladly travel to Greek metal festivals. Do you consider yourself a part or product of that fantastic tradition?
Greece HAD a strong traditional metal tradition. There is no new generation in many years at least at the classic metal sound. Most people at concerts of old bands (except the top mainstream ones) or new bands that playing old style are 40, 50 or even 60 years old now. In some years beers won’t be allowed because everyone will take medicine to help their bad health conditions.
It is not quite surprising that a good and healthy metal culture, either past or present, is followed by new bands and labels that are building on that national tradition and enthusiasm. Your label, No Remorse Records is definitely a great example of that. It is quite clear: Greece is increasingly becoming today’s hotbed for quality Heavy Metal. Do you have some good contacts with other bands and labels from Greece? Any of them worth an extra mention? Which ones should we all check out?
I know in person most of the guys that later started a metal label, mostly before they start anything like that, they were metal fans involving with the metal scene one way or another, many members from the most Greek bands too (at least the traditional hm bands), used to follow them from their demo years. If I have to mention some I have to start with our brothers of DARK NIGHTMARE, they are based in a small town near to ours ,formed pretty much the same period as we did, but they already have 4 high quality full length albums when we just released our first. They were always hard workers and talented. VALIDOR is an extremely EPIC heavy metal band, their leader Odi is a music genius. There are two bands that recently released their albums that also described as Warlord-ish, ARYSITHIAN BLADE and RINGLORN, quality stuff. THE TEMPLE is an excellent band for anyone who needs a more doom direction. Because music is timeless I want to mention and a band that released just a 2 track demo 35 years ago, the mighty AGELESS WISDOM, both tracks are cult epic masterpieces, check them out.
Perhaps a bit of an obvious question and well in line with how we started this conversation. But, we had to wait five years after your ‘March Of The Damned’-EP for something new. Do we need to prepare for another long wait or will you return with new music sooner this time?
I hope the wait won’t be so long this time, we really want to work on this second album the soonest, even if we have to work again after midnight, when all jobs and everyday issues are done, like we did with the first full length.
Alright, for now that was it from my side, thanks a lot for killing some of my curiosity and being part of these pages. In proper tradition, the last and closing words are yours…
Thanks for the review, this interview and everything. I don’t have anything more to add, I already revealed so much!
