Not long ago the Athens-based, genre-bending band Euphrosyne provided a starting introduction to their debut EP Keres through an official video for a song from the EP named “When My Fears Conquered All”. The video shrouds the music with haunting and harrowing imagery which well-suits the song’s haunting and harrowing lyrics, interspersed with views of the band performing, fronted by the frightening countenance of vocalist Efi Eva.

The music is also unsettling, but also functions as a statement of intent for the EP as a whole — and the statement is to expect the unexpected.

In that one song the band push and pull the listener through a genre-labyrinth, creating an amalgam of bone-bruising bass blows and frenzied, squirming, and darting fretwork, of skull-snapping beats and eerie astral keyboards, of gasping whispers and blow-torch screams, of grand chords and rapidly ringing melodies, of wailing yet anthemic soloing, suddenly high-flown singing, and anguished spoken words.

If there’s a thread that holds all the moving parts together, it’s a steadily encroaching aura of darkness that spans moods of confusion, desperation, agony, and fury, with glimpses of grandeur and reprieve that seem just out of reach. Continue reading »