AKRITAS

As a Greek that considers prog to be his musical home, you can imagine I never had any expectations of my country being a prog powerhouse. We were kind of in the middle of a military dictatorship in the late 60's and 70's so there wasn't much room for art, apart from films which were a giant part of the culture. Nevertheless I do find myself searching for lost Greek prog albums. My selections are kinda limited because I am not really a fan of metal, which in my experience has been the most popular non-mainstream genre among Greek music fans of my age ( I am 19) by quite a margin. Pair that with the absolutely horrible and unbearable trap music that is the mainstream, my dislike for any greek pop music and not really being intrested in traditional greek music, 99% of all music ever created in Greece is out of the question for me( thankfully Aphrodite's Child's 666 exists, 5/5 for me).

As I was searching this site for any Greek prog albums that might interest me, this is the only one that caught my attention. To be honest, it was the album cover that hinted at a Space Rock sound. So I figured if there is a Greek album out there that could be worth my time, its this one.

Spoiler alert; it's never gonna be classic prog masterpiece, but I could think of worse ways to spend 33 minutes. Let's get the negatives out of the way. I have a general dislike for Greek vocals and lyrics, I find them incredibly cringy, but that's completely personal so we'll ignore it, there aren't many vocals anyway(not a bad thing imo). The songs are kinda disjointed and cut off very abruptly as the next one begins but not in a good way. They're also kinda short and often too raw, with not much depth to them. But to be honest I can't think of any more negatives.

But I can't think of many positives either. It's clear that the band had plenty of ideas and they did a good of exhibiting them, but not expanding and completing them. Many of the tracks could have been longer with more dense material and fresh ideas. The instruments themselves sound pretty good and the tones kinda remind me of early Nektar. It certainly adds to the mystic nature of the band and inforces the classic what-if argument. I don't believe they had astronomical potential, but I do believe they could have created some very enjoyable albums had they given it a proper go.

In conclusion, its probably not gonna go in your list of prog classics, but if you haven't got anything better to do for 33 minutes, it is definetely worth hearing what those guys had on their minds.