The Greek adventurous, experimental screamo project tetsuo returns on October 31st with its new EP “fauna.”, a follow-up to this year’s debut full-length “Desert Flowers”. What started as a solo adventure is now a two-member operation buried inside Athens’ DIY network, quietly carving out a lane in a scene not particularly known for this corner of hardcore. That first record pushed screamo and emoviolence with no compromise; “fauna.” shifts into a more complex, richer sound built on noise, harder edges, and small experimental detours that feel intentional rather than decorative.
The project’s roots sit inside a local hardcore ecosystem where melancholic post-hardcore textures are rare. That gives their approach context: crushing riffs leaning into metal influence, and lyricism that stays heavy, conceptual, and personal. As the duo describes, their sound aims to reflect “topics of immediate importance to the band’s members,” expanding the scope beyond what most projects attempt at this scale. They see that as part of the point, saying they want to “push the boundaries and start something truly unique” within Athens.
Influence is eclectic, though selective. They cite American screamo acts like Nuvolascura, foxtails, and pageninetynine, and hardcore leaning toward ΟΜΙΧΛΗ, Boundaries, Vildhjarta, Gojira, and Holy Fawn. They frame these inputs as sparse rather than stacked, chasing fluidity instead of references. Regionally, they mention Pray for Decadence and Ascendancy growing alongside them in the same rising wave, hoping to share stages again when paths cross.
Comparing releases, “Desert Flowers” carried the urgency of a debut—fast, sharp, and straightforward. “fauna.” feels like a turn inward: more layers, more dissonance, more space for ideas to unravel. It isn’t a clean departure, just a widening of the lens. There’s no attempt to soften anything; the added experiments sit next to the noise rather than smoothing it out.
Athens’ hardcore community has been stretching in multiple directions lately, and tetsuo fit into that growth by moving against the prevailing aesthetic rather than with it. The duo understands the sparse infrastructure for this sound but leans into that gap. The result is a project that doesn’t feel like it’s waiting for its environment to catch up.
“fauna.” lands as a small document of evolution—still messy, still loud, now packed with more intention. It is less about presenting a perfected version of screamo and more about building one in real time, inside the noise, with no promise of comfort.
