When I think about awesome Heavy Metal music from Greece, I think first of EVERGREY, though being Swedish and all but you will catch my drift. I am a huge fan of their soulful, progressive vocals complimented by the melodic and lightning-fast shredding solos which radiate shamelessly in the dark ambience of science-fiction dramas. I also think about ROTTING CHRIST with their unabashed wisdom expressed through their mastery of heavy rhythmic hooks and memorable guitar harmonies. Another one I am a big fan of is HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, a band who I had the honor of reviewing their recently released full-length LP and add a lot of psychedelic playfulness in a blackened, Progressive Rock atmosphere. So I really know now that, like every other place on Earth where people are playing and writing Heavy Metal, there are going to be one or two EVERGREY's for every dozens of EMPEROR OF MYSELF's.

The best way I can describe a band like EMPEROR OF MYSELF is basically what it sounds like when two under achieving musicians dream of making music that gives off an impression that they are Depressive Black Metal faux-romanticists like LIFELOVER but actually come off sounding like a hideously less talented version of INSOMNIUM or DARK TRANQUILITY minus the expensive professional mastering and mixing. EMPEROR OF MYSELF released this album in 2013 and have since released the album "All Ends In Tears" back in the middle of March of 2014. It features Nick Georgiou on guitars so I am unsure if the drummer had learned to improve his technique or not since this release.

The drums are so unbelievably sloppy on every single track of "Question Your Existence". They are the biggest farce about this entire band because the backbone to any amazing Metal band is the drummer really solid experience creating atmosphere or a rocking groove, not to mention the expertise of creating intricate and creative fills even within a relatively slow tempo. Alex Palizos, obviously related to band mate Dimitris, struggles consistently with achieving the entire concept of percussion and even the assistance of audio engineering cannot mask that the drums have nothing to offer the listener at all.

There is a lot of sloppiness coming from the guitars as well. This can be demonstrated on the inexcusably bad track "Honesty", which is an out-of-tune grunge song that momentarily cracks into melodic metal bull that break up the whining of whichever Palizos attempted to clean sing the verses on that awful song. It just sounds so nauseating to get through all the way without skipping it all together and saving yourself the trauma. I feel like I have to point these glaring negative sides of the album out because I think that if there was some more talent behind this band than there already is. MPEROR OF MYSELF could be a band I might be really into and wouldn't have to struggle with trying to find the constructive and earned praises of the critic. It is quite a disappointment that this band cannot take itself seriously enough to create something that doesn't come off of lazy, off-time Schlock Metal.

There are accents on this record remind me again and again that this album could've turned out to be something really cool like the strings with the piano on "No One Will Remember" and the Post-Rock intro of "Question Your Existence". Why can't the band put more creative efforts into the heavier passages as much as they do into the more somber and melodic ones? One thing is for sure; none of the songs work with the kind of drums that are delivered on this record. They completely and utterly guff up the songs on here like an out-of-tune instrument or tone-deaf singer. I now know what many elitist Black Metal fans hear when they listen to EVERGREY.