Interview with Chain Cult
A chat with Chain Cult, a dark/post-punk band from Athens
Chain Cult come from Greece, precisely Athens, they make devastating post-punk and have 4 works under their belt, all released via La Vida Es Un Mus, except for the 2018 demo tape which was self-produced. Recently they also came to Italy and coming back to me for a self-presentation on Up Zine, I listened again to their discography on loop and decided to contact them to ask them some questions. Let’s see what Chain Cult have to say in this interview!
Radio Punk: Hi guys and welcome to our ‘zine! Tell us a bit about yourselves. How and in what context did you form? What other bands did you play with in the past and if so what kind of music did you play?
Chain Cult: Thanks a lot for hosting us! Well, we’re three punks from Athens, Greece. We have been involved in the local DIY scene for many years, and it is where we actually met each other and became good friends. We were always into post-punk and new-wave and at some point we just wanted to do something different and make our own band playing this style. We have played in many bands –and still play in some acts- from hardcore punk to crust, rock ‘n’ roll, post-punk, punk rock etc. Lifewreck, Dirty Wombs, Feral Kids, Rampage!, Conspiracy Of Denial, Αρχή Του Τέλους are just a couple of these bands.
Radio Punk: Besides playing music, what projects or collectives are you or have you been involved in the past?
Chain Cult: We had been part of several DIY music collectives and squats in the years like Villa Amalias’ concerts collective back in the days, Prokat35 squat in Patras city, several self-organized practice rooms and studios in our city, and of course a couple of political collectives and endeavors in the past. Dino also had a fanzine. Some of us still help with concerts in our town and are part of Distort Reality collective which organizes a couple of big DIY shows in Athens, one to two times per year.
Radio Punk: From your lyrics and from some of the articles I have read about you guys (like in DIY Up magazine), your social and political stance is evident. How much does the political aspect and Do It Yourself matter to you both as individuals and as a band?
Chain Cult: As individuals, it is obvious that you must be a political being, right? Otherwise, you are a passenger in life. As a band, we’re not a political collective let’s clarify this, but we think that political stance and music kind of make a whole. I mean you get to speak to so many people through your music. You cannot separate some of your thoughts about what’s happening in your surroinding from the music, or hide them from it. DIY is a culture that shaped us as personalities, it is the most sincere and humane form of expressing yourself through art, organizing your life in our society and interacting with other people around you.
Radio Punk: Your sound is dark, very dark and post-punk but at the same time your sound can appeal to just about anyone who listens to punk. How would you describe your sound to someone who has never listened to you? What should we expect in the next record, will you always stay close to the mood of the first releases?
Chain Cult: To someone who has never listened to punk we’d say something like The Cure or Joy Division (laughs). To others, we’d just say post-punk! We have many ideas about our next releases, some new elements or maybe a new approach both songwriting-wise and production-wise, but we’ll see! Of course we want our sound to evolve and be fresh always!
Radio Punk: You come from Greece, a land where bands we love were formed! I don’t think we’ve ever interviewed any Greek bands, which is a shame because there are so many interesting bands. Would you like to tell us a little bit about the scene in your area? Both the city you live in and in general if there are any scenes in other cities in Greece.
Chain Cult: Proportionally to its size, Greece has had an insane amount of underground bands through the years, and unfortunately, only a few of them got to be known abroad. You can find tons of hidden gems from extremely obscure bands if you dig deep. The love for metal and extreme music by the Greeks is evident and we always had plenty of black metal, thrash, hardcore, crust bands playing around. Greece also has a long history in the dark-wave / post-punk / new-wave scene, starting from the ‘80s and still keeping going in our days. There are a lot of post-punk bands nowadays, and you can listen to that kind of music everyday in the bars and the parties of Athens. The punk scene has always been political here and deeply connected with the local anarchist and radical left movement, it used to be spread all over the country but unfortunately it’s been concentrated in the capital lately.
Radio Punk: Was there a golden age of punk in Greece? How do you see the current situation, both punk and political (in the sense of squats/anti-capitalist galaxy) in your part of the world? Is there a scene in the world that you particularly admire?
Chain Cult: There were amazing bands and records in the ‘80s and the early ‘90s, and we used to think of those periods as golden ages, but to be honest it was probably tough to be a punk in Greece back in those days. The scene was very small, Greek society was so conservative after the dictatorship years and these people were indeed outcasts in their cities. There were not the means to practice with your band or record your music easily, neither many places to perform live. Geographically, the country was –and still is- a remote place for the rest of north and central Europe and it was almost impossible to make your music “travel” abroad. It was kind of “heroic” to run a band in the way we know it today, you know do lives, release records, tour etc. That is why those bands are still appreciated by everyone. An excellent era, that we were lucky enough to live and actually be a part of it was the early ‘10s, the years between 2010 and 2015. Many amazing bands popped up, with great records, well produced and well performed live. There was an amazing network of groups, collectives and squats that had been very active shaping an amazing community all over the country with strong friendships included. Under these circumstances we met too. Nowadays, the situation is not so good. The same people are still active in the scene but they are very tired because they’re old with many other obligations in parallel. There is lack of new blood, active with initiatives, that could take risks and do something great and radical, and the general repression of the last years made us lost many squats and places where we could host our events. Generally, the local anarchist movement is not in the best shape and this affects the local punk scene as well. Meanwhile, hip hop reigns among the youth and it seems that it has a stronger and more relevant message for the younger people than punk rock. Very briefly in a political perspective, there is a lot of poverty, extremely low salaries and very high rents, one of the most corrupted, neoliberal and uneducated governments in power, even more corrupted media supporting this government, everything is getting sold to foreign capital, and half of the population still lives under fear, neediness and ignorance leading to xenophobic, sexist, and generally conservative views.
Radio Punk: Would you like to make a living as punk rockers? What do you think of those who choose/manage to live off punk or diy?
Chain Cult: Oh Lord! Full-time job is one of the worst things in the world. We hate our jobs already, and we hate working five days per week, eight hours per day, even if we do so. I don’t really know, I couldn’t imagine what we do being infused with everyday concerns and worries around surviving in this society. And of course, except if you are as huge as The Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden or Social Distortion, it is more likely that you’ll be working very hard, be on the road every day, write as much music as you can in a short time span, and barely manage to make a living. At the same time you’ll probably lose some quality time with locals and friends in the places you visit, even in your own hometown, so I don’t know. And not any band can make it this way, right? You need to be a really big, good and hard working music group in order to achieve this. We’ve grown up and we cannot judge those who live off their music. I think we’ll try to keep it free and pure as long as we are able to tolerate the general depression of our ordinary lives and jobs…
Radio Punk: Speaking of music, you guys self-produced your first demo and then joined La Vida Es Un Mus. How was it to collaborate with this incredible label, as it is one of the most professional in the post-punk, hardcore and anarcho-punk field?
Chain Cult: We have an amazing collaboration so far. We didn’t know Paco before, we just sent him our music shortly after we made it public, he liked it and so it began! La Vida Es Un Mus does an incredible distribution worldwide, you can find our records all over the world, literally. Meanwhile, it delivers great music, with great attention to any kind of detail like packaging, production, everything. Each one of our records has been repressed three times so far, so we guess that the whole thing has been successful up until now.
Radio Punk: After last year’s incredible “We Are Not Alone EP”, what does the future hold for Chain Cult? Will you be playing all over the world? When will a full-length be released? We’re looking forward to it here!
Chain Cult: A lot of shows! We missed playing a lot, and we want to focus on touring in the next months and the new season. Then there is the second full-length album in our minds and we look forward to the whole process of writing and producing it. Oh! And there will be a great compilation with Greek post-punk, synth and new-wave bands in 2022, featuring a new song by us, a surprise one!
Radio Punk: We’d like to close with a big thank you for your incredible passion and availability and ask you to tell us about the worst thing that happened on tour (without naming names), the craziest stuff that happened on tour and your favorite moments! Thanks again, see you next time!
Chain Cult: Thanks a lot for this interview, it was a great one! Feel free to ask us anything any time. Fortunately, we cannot recall any really bad and serious experience from our tours. Of course we had vans and cars breaking down all the time but it never cost us any show, luckily. Probably, the worst page in our band’s history is the two cancelled tours we had completely booked, one for USA in 2020 and one for Russia in 2022, related to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine respectively, two global events that changed the world and cost so many people’s lives. Of course our band is secondary in this case and life continues. What we love the most is meeting up with people of extremely high quality in all of our tours. Persons that are great souls, amazing personalities, interesting individuals. These people make us continue what we do. Crazy moments is whenever everyone is singing our songs far away from home and when promoters ask us to play for a second time (laughs) even if we are completely fucked up and high. This happened twice!
Credit photo: George Argyropoulos Photography
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