Athens doesn’t have much of a screamo scene. Pray for Decadence know this — they built one anyway.
The five-piece (Michael Trochanis on vocals, Alexandros Sarros and Orestis LB on guitars, Hephaestion Christopoulos on bass, Kostia Katsilieri on drums — all contributing backing vocals) describe themselves as post-screamo, a label that fits but only partially.
“Sleeping in the Deep,” their debut EP, is a thoroughly unkempt thing — noise rock bleeding into post-hardcore bleeding into grunge bleeding into something that doesn’t quite have a name yet. The eclecticism isn’t decorative; it’s structural. These tracks shift registers mid-song in ways that feel genuinely unplanned, like the band is discovering where each piece wants to go while they’re already playing it.
That live-wire quality bleeds into the recording. Thodoris Valsamakis tracked, mixed and mastered at SoundWay Studios, and whether by design or disposition, it sounds like being in the room — not in a flattering reverb-drenched way, but in a way where you feel the heat and the proximity of five people working something out together.
The lyrics, all written by Hephaestion Christopoulos, pull no punches.
“Dirge for the Voiceless” opens with death framed as silence — life as a series of intermissions between two of the same — and works through a catalog of things left unsaid, unforgiven, unscreamed. It ends with vocal cords ripping and blood in the throat.
“Little Zodiac Boy” is harder to shake: dedicated to Aylan Kurdi (named here as Alan Shenu), the Syrian toddler found face-down on a Turkish beach in 2015, it tracks the impossible logic of a child told to float, who was never given what makes floating possible. Guest vocals on the track come from Giota of D16.
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The booklet — designed by Yiannis Papadopoulos, with photography by Orestis LB — is worth spending time in.
It’s Athens shot at its most undone: vacant lots full of debris, stacked tires, barbed wire, graffiti reading “ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ” (history) sprayed across what looks like a shuttered newsstand, a stuffed bear wedged under a sign reading “CONTROLLED ZONE.”
A noose hangs on a graffiti-covered wall while the “Dirge for the Voiceless” lyrics are typed across it in monospace. The cover is a back-alley shot washed pale purple — trash bins, blocked paths, a lone figure behind a gate. Not trying to aestheticize decay; just pointing at it.
A sixth member has recently joined on keys, though she didn’t record on the EP and there are no band photos with her yet. “Sleeping in the Deep” is available as a free download from their Bandcamp.
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