Dictator
The Pain Sessions (MCD) 2006 None
A deserted church on a hill top surrounded by woodland. As the sun sets, its rays die slowly in the cloudy horizon. Then darkness descends and only the wind remains, chanting words of evil and despair in your ear. For a moment, it sounds like a last prayer before the apocalypse. That’s how I envisage the musical output of Dictator; a dark and misanthropic one-man entity hailing from Cyprus. The track ‘Emptiness’ with its sorrowful, hypnotically repetitive Gregorian sample had been playing in my mind’s eye one cloudy Sunday, on my way to the hill top of Harrow-On-The-Hill in London, blending magnificently with the deceitfully serene landscapes that seemed to be possessed by a secret menace. Dictator is a funeral/ambient doom project, one of the kind where words like ‘metal’ and ‘extreme’ have long lost any meaning, becoming void and frustratingly insufficient to describe such heart-wrenching sorrow and deep emotion. A solitary piano note, the sound of slowly streaming water and a whisper full of pain and suffering become your companions in this insane march towards the depths of the earth, where only hell’s fire could be waiting. Painfully distorted guitars and screams of utter hopelessness accompany you to your final Golgotha. This is not just music; this is a cry of despair, similar to those desolate shrieks of solitude uttered by Nortt and Until Death Overtakes Me. It’s the voice of the desperate ones who are bemoaning their hopeless fates as they are taken away by the shadows to be judged for their sins in the underworld. http://www.thetruedictator.tk	1.I Chorodia ton Daimonon (Intro) 2.The Procession of the Black Fog 3.Emptiness 4.Apo tis Eikones ton Archaion Necron (Outro) Approx. 31 minutes
Reviewed by: Kostas Panagiotou