started in 1991 and used to be what is nowadays called a death-rock band. It happened at a place marked on Greek maps as “Karditsa”, although it actually is “the Bog”. A lot of swamp things got recruited to play the usual instruments rock bands played half a century ago, and a lot of them sunk back to their swamp.
The idea was to come up with a hybrid of Greek folk music and American Heavy Metal. In a way, it still is the same to this day... but for the nausea Starcry feel at the sound of the words “Greek” and “American”.
To begin with, the debut gig the band played (1992), where the name was officially pronounced for the first time, occurred at a school party, in front of thousands of swamp teachers, swamp pupils, swamp moms and dads; the repertoir included a cover of Lynott/Moore’s “Parisienne Walkways” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re not gonna take it” (!); and the whole event was so unsuccessfully wonderful that the band thought they should give it a second chance and try again...
The swamp teens that played in the band then - and are now considered the swamp parents of Starcry - were Nikos Dachris (vocals, guitar) and Nikos Doukas (bass-guitar), and Dimitris Zambogas (drums), and Apostolis Tzafalias (guitar).
Soon, the goth/punk approach to hard-rock songs led into a pit of bits of Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and Motorhead glued together with Ultravox! and Yazoo! that might have sounded like Joan Jett meets Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, had the members of the band not been swamp things in the Bog. As such, the band wanted to head for a heavy-metal sound in-between early Paradise Lost and early Crimson Glory, that somehow resulted in a Nephilimish landscape the elders of the Bog classified as something along the Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple lines (!).

It is only now this obvious that Starcry where going nowhere at all back then, and the Greek-lyrics-only side-project Rockshire, in which the band played commercial covers in country-side bars, could only confuse things further.
Dachris did his first experimental recording on tape as Rockshire, using borrowed palaeolithic electronics and mixers. Iit came out so depressing and darkwave that only dedicated swamp fans of the band could bare listening to it, the band itself couldn’t. (Ah...! Those were the days!...)
Still, Starcry were very young and full of life-energy and puerile ambitions...
Teens over, Dachris and Doukas found themselves on the verge of destiny that wanted them to part destinations. Their last get-togethers saw them surrounded by a crue that the Bog could wash ashore as its ambassadors, for the band then sounded as foul as the great Bog itself.

The kids in the 1993 photo (Sefis Triantafillou –drums, Nikos Doukas –bass, Nikos Dachris –Vox&Guits, Kostas Zaharis –Keyboard) sounded as boy-ish as they look, almost like My Dying Bride and Anathema. Shortly after this photo was taken, Nikos Pavlis (guitar) was added to them (or maybe they were added to him), and shortly after that, they sort of split up.
It was time for the Grand Quest, the heroes set off to seek the Holy Grail...
And guess what:
In 1994, Starcry left the Bog.
And never returned.

Or so they thought.
In 1997, Nikos Dachris had become Nick Dachris, because he was in England and the English pronunciation of “Nikos” is very close to “knickers” and it had to change. He was surprised to find out that the Bog was a universal phaenomenon, and that the place he was studying in then, was almost as bad as where he was before. The spot in Great Britain’s map is marked as “Swindon”.
Naturally, Starcry was born-a-fresh.
A swamp Mac and a swamp Korg (all second hand) substituted the swamp band and Nick started trying to get the original swamp feeling back, which, of course, was impossible. The de-Bog experiment was set in motion. The swamp days were over. Here the elders could at least tell that Starcry sounded Goth, and due to the electronic sound, even Industrial, a bit like KMFDM in slow motion, but far from anything that could be registered as music one could listen to pleasantly.
This was never proven live though. A tape titled Starcry demo ’97 was circulated for a little while. The feedback wasn’t negative, but it wasn’t positive either, and Nick felt the glory of that first grand shite school gig creeping back into his self-esteem.

At the Art college, the Starcry identity got involved with the persistent and passionate effort of dance students and teachers, in jazz, classical and modern ballet classes, where Nick's major project in Illustration had cast him to.
Later, when the British mentality was established in Nick’s attitude, that involvement was his mightiest protection against his natural Greek indolence and algophobia...
And as if that was not a lesson enough to him, Nick found there was an even boggier place in the world that had to accommodate him. A legendary place. Not marked on every map...
“ Banbury”.
In 1999, Nick wrote “Made of Pain” in Banbury, a few miles north of Oxford. He even made a video-clip for this song. It was justified as part of getting his BA with a wider project called Scorpion Symphony.

Starcry was seemingly transcending the curse of the Bog. And sounded more like KMFDM. A new tape was recorded and sent out to record companies. And then Nick came across the music of KMFDM for the first time. And knew that he had been missing something out, that he had to try harder.

As it were at this point, Starcry had lost its swamp links and was a one-man-band. Nick Dachris went back to Greece and like a good honourable Greek man that he was, served the Greek Army for 18 months. His disappointment was immense when he realised that he was destined to face the Bog everywhere.

He could let go at that point, give up Starcry and the dancers' effort outfit and the grand shite gig’s first applause that had long since gone dumb, and let the Bog swallow him.
Or he could run from it forever, chasing the personal demon he had made out of Starcry. And strive for what he believed is worth living for, when you are a lower middle-class fuck that wants to make a difference.

Yeah.
He chose to hold on to the old swampy dream and resist the Bog.

Starting business in Athens, where he was born, Nick Dachris would stay and fight the Bog, for this was his miserable destiny. (It could have been a lot worse, Nick).

Destiny -of course, what else?- brought Nikos Pavlis to Athens and back into the Starcry force.
And Zoe Dachris, Nick’s sister, too.
And a new professional home-studio, straight out of the genie-bottle, and lo and behold! Cockroach Studio was the new Starcry home!
In 2002, the first Starcry album, “Ideal Husband”, was recorded and pre-released!

The debut Starcry album is comprised of 10 tracks that deal with the turbulant relationship between the Id, the Self, and the Ego, in a world that has only debt to promise for a future to young people. It can be followed throughout as one piece of bizarre meditation, a passage of enchanting disillusionment, celebrating the ugliness that modern cultures promote as ideal for private life-values.

And the critics outside Greece liked it!
It sounded unique in style and quality, 'it’s not great but definitely very good' wrote Mick Mercer, and Starcry were proud, and Nick felt he’d made a huge dancer leap forward!
But record companies don’t mind Nick's feelings, do they?
By rule of thumb, Greek labels need effortless music for effortless ears, no place for anything risky in the Greek market, 'sorry, try imitating an already established brand, or go be original somewhere else'.
And also hypothetically, labels abroad need music that can be justified in their market by the band itself, no place for a correspondence band from Greece that sounds like an alien parody to darkwave/EBM- 'we listen to all demos but most bands release their debuts on their own and if they are successful we sign them'.
Well, guess what:
Nick Dachris had to try still harder!
Because noone else was going to, and, anyway, it’s HIS fucking obsession, isn’t it?

Nick had to get into trouble with the dark energies of the Bog. Logical reasoning proved as difficult a task as frequently argued by modern art, and people were not prepared to face it, since it was always taken for granted. And then it vanished altogether. And the oblivion of its absence was so forgiving...

After Ideal Husband, a nice financial and a nicer neurological crisis, Nick wrote five new songs and a new version of a 1992 Starcry song, (Sanctum), and packed them in a demo CD with the name “Answer Me”, as a relief from his broader desperation, that coincided with the 2003 American wanky-do’s in old Persia.

Business taking an upturn for the adventurous leader, 14 new tracks got released in 2005 in Starcry's second album titled “One Night Stand”.

This is a Science-fiction colored audio torment that speaks of very deep everyday pleasures and agonies.There is an Orphic mysteries sequence to the songs. It is definitely far more sinister and devastating than its predecessor, but somehow easier to listen to (in parts). Contains most of "Answer Me", too. And it is received as a great improvement to an already good scheme.

Concerning brand sector pigeonholes, Starcry at this stage was difficult to compare with other well-known bands, but if one liked the old Skinny Puppy stuff, they would likeky like Starcry's too. Feedback from critics and non-critics (mis)placed Starcry between Nitzer Ebb and the Future Sound of London with the majesty of Fading Colors and a touch of Das Ich. Playlists that included Starcry at this point, were also populated by Ministry, White (& Rob) Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Kreator(!), Suicide Commando, :Wumpscut:, Project Pitchfork, Christian Death, Dead Can Dance, Joy Division, Sunshine Blind, Concrete Blonde, Eurythmics, Boytronic, Madonna. And the Sisters of Mercy, the Mission, the Fields of the Nepfilim, the Nine Inch Nails, and the Siouxsie and her Banshees. And a lot more, but -surprisingly- seldom or no KMFDM. Under the influence of this new bit of contextual enlightenment, Starcry could be characterised as dark alternative to the Classic Rock lines it errupted from. In short, Starcry would fall under an' artistic, industrial/electro-goth' heading. In shorter still, just Gothic Rock. Or Electro. Or Industrial. Or even 'Foreign'/'World'. Whatever suits the audience.

"One Night Stand" was followed by the" One Night Tour", another great incident in the Starcry saga...

But not before a time-warp of almost two years during which "The Giaour Project" was recorded and released as a free gift to the visitors of this very web-site. The freakiest ever Starcry compositions, full of scorn and mockery towards the establishment of glamorous Olympics, Eurovisions, Soccer Cups, National parades and rocketing Public debt and unemployment, were meant to shock the Greeks and those influencing Greek matters out of complacency. The Giaour (a fragment of a Turkish tale) was Byron's top pop hit in the 1800's and intimately bound to the history of the Greek independence from the Ottoman empire. But although the 1821 revolution is meticulously commemorated in Greece, neither Byron's nor Starcry's Giaour ever touched the Greek aural system. It's a magnificent ghost-story. Fit for the ghost-band that Starcry has become of late.

"One Night Tour"(2006) was followed by an idiotic, online blaze of glory that made Starcry one of the most known dark genre bands in the Greek scene at the time. Most people made no sense of this development and no change was observed in the sales of CDs and T-shirts afterwards - those remained null. But the market and cultural feedback Nick Dachris got out of it was invaluable, and it pointed to the path Starcry were taking next.

"Syphilisation" was finalised in 2008 and mastered by the revered Tom Baker of the Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Judas Priest, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Static X and others, level of sound professionalism. It was the most defining Starcry moment and, sadly, the last achievement of Cockroach Studio.

Bringing together a signature Greek, unfathomable monster of metal and electro, Western influnces with subliminally captivating, Middle-Eastern ones, Starcry recorded a diachronic monument to the psycho-economic situation of modern Democracy, in "Syphilisation". Coinciding with its release, wildfire riots started in Athens, and the country sunk into an Economic Crisis that would become renowned globally, putting the Eurozone in a very awkward position for years to come. The band was shocked to witness what they thought was a subjective clue of their peculiar paranoia alone, become the main objective for an entire nation, without Syphilisation ever hitting the radio-waves.

Starcry hardly promoted their records. Most people around them were too busy kicking each other's balls most of the time, to consider current artistic messages by 'foreign-speaking' snobs who renounced the kicking practice altogether. To someone who had experience with the dark energies of the Bog, Greece was obviously overwhelmed by a mass psycho-pathological epidemic of pure and utter schizophrenia, in 2008. Its corrupt socio-cultural structuration had seized every aspect of existential sense, logical and aesthetic. Very few people still knew life without debt. Noone was making any real sense. Everyone was blaming someone else. Noone was taking responsibility. And then the worst symptom emerged: everyone was having fun being angry and incoherent, taking pleasure in promoting pain and misery and spastic laughter. 'Syphilisation' no longer depicted a nightmarish precognition of a world going mad; instead it came to be a factual recognition of the madness, with tested prescriptions for successful treatment, in common metaphorical forms.

Whether Starcry's Syphilisation or any sort of authentic, 'underground' philosophy can make a difference to the world or not, remains to be determined. So far it seems like the old world is dying, just as it was always the case. Maybe when historians in a calmer future examine the data, there can exist a plausible conclusion. Starcry suggest that it is indeed so, but under the condition of an open society with an open culture with an open market with an open plan, and the democratically guided, continuous re-valuation of personal, tribal and national identities, in global scale. Music will always be there and so will 'undergroud' Art. They will always be there to measure the levels of altruism the human species is capable of. It's about time they got noticed by those at the high offices before the nightmares hit the streets. And the broadcast media had better remember that they're not there just to 'give their people what they want' by rules of Facebook 'Likes', they're there to help us all make sense of our lives.

The gloomy recession, still deepening four years later, darkly confirms the prophecies spelled out in Starcry's last release. And we've yet to come to terms with our animalistic emotions for catharsis to occur. Cockroach Studio is still uninhabitable due to the tear-gas and scorchings smog of downtown Athens. Nick Dachris has returned to the UK and started a new business, secure for his sanity in the realisation that the gteat Bog was in a sense real and actually spreading, and it wasn't just him it was after.

Dr Nikos Pavlis has returned to Karditsa to practice advanced accounting. Dr Zoe Dachris has devoted her attention to exploring new paths in academic synthesis.

As it stands in April 2012, Starcry has fallen silent. Listening to the cries of despair from the fall of short-termism produces a twisted pleasure for the artistic demons possessing the souls of the band members. Meanwhile, the friction between macro- paranoia and micro-common sense is preparing the grounds for unprecedented Art. The Bog is upon us, all...

Except Nick!

;-D

This story is to be continued.

"Syphilisation" and "One Night Stand" are distributed by Music Post (GR).

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