“Every aspect of life in Greece is connected with music, everything,” says Alex Karametis, frontman of Villagers of Ioannina City. “From the happiest to the saddest moments, there is always music.”
Perhaps that’s what gives his band extra potency. That sense that this music matters – singing of human struggles via powerful riffs, anthemic choruses and atmospheric old-world textures.
“I’m always trying to find meaning in something, what life means, what death means, why society is unfair,” says the frontman, who also produced their brilliant new LP Venceremos. “It’s like psychotherapy. I always say to my friends that if I didn’t have music I’d be in an institution or something.”
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Over three studio albums, tours across Europe and headline Greek gigs in front of thousands, Villagers Of Ioannina City have honed a striking cocktail of hard rock, stoner heft and proggy metal spiced with old Hellenic instruments. Heady sounds that Karametis grew up hearing at ‘panigiria’ (village festivals) now feed into their records.
“It always felt natural,” he says. “So it’s very easy, because we’re not forcing ourselves to add anything. We just hear it in our heads, and do it.”
It all starts with Ioannina, a small mountain city in Northwest Greece where the band – completed by Akis Zois on bass and Aris Giannopoulos on drums – come from. Connections to nearby villages run deep.
“People go every weekend, they have houses there,” Karametis explains. “I spent my childhood summers there.”
Classically trained in piano and flute from age six, Karametis absorbed Mozart and co alongside his parents’ Simon & Garfunkel and Deep Purple records. As kids he and his future bandmates found Metallica, Iron Maiden, In Flames and others, and started jamming. It wasn’t until after high school, in Sweden – lured by the country’s metal scene – that Karametis connected with the traditional music of his youth.
“I was doing some errands in Stockholm, waiting in the bus station,” he says. “The sun came and I got a bit homesick.”
Back home, Villagers of Ioannina City began in earnest in 2007. Local gigs reaped steady audience growth. In 2014, they went from crowds of 400 to shows in front of 1500 people in Athens and Thessaloniki. Now they fill arenas on home turf. All of which shows on Venceremos (‘We will win’), a Spanish title but a familiar term in Greece.
You can hear the dramatic Epirus landscape in these songs. The low, hypnotic, clarinet-heavy notes of ‘epirotika’ (the area’s traditional style). Sadness set to an upbeat tempo. Reflections of a world “going completely wrong”.
“I strongly believe we will win in the end,” says Karametis. “But right now it’s open to interpretation what ‘winning’ means. It’s not exactly about winning, it’s about refusing to break.”
Venceremos is out now via Napalm.
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