A few months ago I had the opportunity to interview Downwinder, a new Greek band that appeared on the scene in 2021 with an excellent crust punk record that has its roots in the historical Greek scene of Chaotic End, Hibernation and Forgotten Prophecy. With a “little” delay I finally publish their answers in which they talk not only about the current situation of the Greek punk and hardcore scene, but also about the eviction of the Biological Squat on New Year’s Eve, punk as a means of solidarity and direct action against capitalist brutality and State repression and more generally the socio-political situation that Greece has gone through in recent years.
To you the words of Downwinder!
Hi Downwinder! Let’s start in the most classic way: when, how and why was the band born and what inspired you to come up with the name?
Hello! Downwinder formed in 2019 in Volos city, central Greece. We know each other since forever and we had made other projects when we were in our teen age but for a long time we were in seperate cities. When Costas (guitars) returned back to our home town, during the summer of 2019, we decided to launch this band and play the sound we love.
Downwinders were communities that had been exposed to military nuclear weapons tests mainly in USA and have resulted in a large increase in cancer cases even decades later. So, this is how we came up with the band name.
A few weeks ago the sad news of the eviction of the Bilogical Squat, a very important place for the punk scene and anarchist movement in Greece. What was your relationship with this squat? And more generally, would you like to tell us what happened before, during and after the eviction?
Biologica squat in Thessaloniki along with Villa Amalias in Athens were the two most significant living cells of the Greek diy hardcore punk scene. The space had been occupied back in 1987 and it has been a really active squat politically and musically for 34 years or so. For a lot of diy bands all over the globe that were touring Europe since the 90’s, Biologica squat was certainly a place to play some furious music, stage dive and have some fun! A lot of benefit gigs were organized all over the years to support political prisoners, immigrants , anarchists or radical left people who were haunted by the state. We had played with Downwinder and with others bands in the past and it was actually one of the best diy places out there! Without being so sure about the details, Biologica squat was evicted early in the morning of 31st of December 2021. After that, some people occupied another space in the university as a protest and when the police arrived, they tried to defend it. Some people got arrested and there was a huge solidarity demonstration in the centre of the city. So we stand in solidarity with Biologica squat and with every single person who is trying to make less miserable our everyday lives. As a matter of fact, political beliefs and ideas cannot be evicted!
In response to the eviction of the Biological Squat, the GrPunk collective published a benefit compilation in which you participated along with many other bands from the Greek hardcore punk scene and beyond. How important are for you practices such as solidarity and complicity with those who fight every day against this world of repression, daily oppression, exploitation and alienation?
Actually in Greece, the punk scene is directly related in a political sense, with the general struggle for freedom and equality. Just from the beginning of its existence, punk scene has been standing on the side of every person who is fighting for a better world, or every person who is brutally assaulted every day by the state, the police or the capitalism itself. In a country like Greece that is facing a huge economic crisis for more than ten years or so, with poor working conditions, poverty and unemployment along with a huge wave of migration, where thousands of people are stacked in concentration camps by the Greek state, which is serving the general tactics of the European union, if you don’t choose a side and scream loudly for this new dystopia we are all facing every day, you are simply as guilty as the others for all this situation. We are all have been very active in squats all over Greece especially the previous years, organizing solidarity shows for political prisoners and trying to help through our music and our state of mind. So as a matter of fact, solidarity and helping each other is our only weapon to survive!
What does it mean to play hardcore and punk for Downwinder in 2022? What is the potential and the role that punk can and should play today to oppose, resist, threaten and attack State and Capitalism?
No huge words here… Playing the music we like with our friends in a beautiful stinky basement, is the only way out of our miserable every day life. As far as it concerns the general role of punk nowadays. Unfortunately, punk cannot save the world. It can only make it better and less miserable. This is what we do anyways. Playing music, organizing shows, making zines, distributing records and keeping the flame still burning. The diy ethics, the solidarity for every single oppressed person out there and the anticommercial way of creativity is our answer to the capistalist brutality.
Moving on to talk about your music, you play a very metallic crust punk with obvious references to that primordial soup known as stenchcore. Yours is a sound and atmosphere that also brings to mind the historical and unique Greek hardcore/crust scene of Chaotic End and Hibernation. What are your main influences and how did you approach these sounds? But most of all, do you see a link and a continuum between you, your music and your approach and that of the historical Greek hardcore/crust scene of the 80s/90s?
We are glad you mentioned these bands! The whole Greek 90’s Hardcore/Crust scene is what introduced us into this genre of music back when we were teens. Bands like Chaotic End, Naytia, Forgotten Prophecy, Hibernation, Mastiga, Nuclear Winter etc. have been a big punch in the face when we first heard them and surely in one or another way quite a big influence in how we see hardcore and crust music. Regarding our influences in general, we are big fans of Punk, Hardcore, Crust, Thrash and Death Metal music among others. We guess all these genres have played their role in how Downwinder sounds. As we said before with first came across with these sounds when we were teens about 20 years or so ago, before the rise of internet. So, it happened mostly by exchanging records and duplicating them in tapes with each other.
We do not know if there is a continuum between our music and that of the Greek Hardcore/Crust scene of the 80s/90s, it depends on how anyone sees it. There is definitely a continuum in how we prefer and want all this thing to be done. The DIY way of making/distributing music and organizing shows and the whole political background has put its roots during the 80’s, grew stronger during the 90’s and it continues to grow even stronger up to present as, not only us, but fortunately the biggest part of bands and individuals that are related to this scene think and act this way.
How is the situation of the more political and militant hardcore punk scene in Greece and especially in your city (Volos)? What are the most interesting situations at the level of squats, social centres, collectives, bands, etc.?
Talking about the nowadays militant and political hardcore punk scene in Greece generally, we could say that it is in a very good but stable level. Many interesting bands both musically and ideologically have been formed the last few years, but many ones have split-up also. What characterizes the Greek (and probably the worldwide) hardcore punk scene since its beginning we could say are short-lived bands but with big impact. Specifically about Volos, we can’t say that a political hardcore/punk scene ever existed. There were some great bands in the past and there are also some now but you can’t call it a scene with two or three bands maximum at every period,especially when these bands share pretty much the same members.
The situation is fortunately pretty much the same in the whole country. There are squats, or at least places where people can gather, exchange ideas, organize actions and scream against everything that oppresses them in almost every city.
As for the bands worth checking, the list is quite long and we will definitely forget many so we’ll stick to some of the newer ones whose debut stuff we really enjoyed, like Mormo, Rampage, Pisssniffers, Dishonor, Savura, Formoli and BloodTrace.
Your first record was one of my favourites of last year. What inspired you to write the songs and what are your lyrics about?
Thanks for the compliment, we are glad you liked it! Well, inspiration came both from everything and nothing. Some songs were written having a specific concept in mind,some were inspired by something we liked or we did not like and some others just came up when rehearsing. Playing music and hanging out in the studio is like psychotherapy. It is 2 hours of getting away from our everyday shitty routine, releasing our anger, expressing our feelings,drinking alcohol and trying to be creative through the the tunes we like to hear and play. That is pretty much how the music part of our songs is written.
Regarding lyrics, they vary from personal matters to global ones. Society, corruption, shitty attitudes, war, capitalism, environmental issues, mental issues, religion, patriarchy, human rights are some of the topics we deal with in them. Again, some of them are inspired by a specific incident we experienced or read about and some others are more general. Some are written in a more literal and simple way, but most of them are written in a more symbolic and personal point of view way. In other words, they are just our thoughts about everything that concerns or disturbs us, written on paper.
Are you already working on a new album? Will it be similar in sound to your debut or will there be some changes in influences?
We have already written our second full length album. We now discuss about the final details and further changes that may applied to the composition of the songs. We are about to start recording it. The sound will vary in the same style, but we believe the set of the songs is more consistent than our debut album and accompanied by an extra death metal feeling.
In the last two years we have all had to deal with the covid 19 pandemic, with not only health implications but also and above all political and economic ones. How was the pandemic situation handled in Greece, both in the hardcore punk scene and at government level? What have been and continue to be the main difficulties in this period?
In the last two years it seems that time has frozen. Apart from the fact that the Greek (far) right-wing government is completely useless to make even one right move to make people feel safer against the covid outbreak, it is passing laws invoking the pandemic that poor become poorer and this party’s friends richer, always serving their main fascist idea of law and order. I am confident that these laws will continue to exist after the end of this situation.
Speaking of the hc / punk scene, when squatters or other leftist groups organize a political / music event that takes place indoors, the police are more likely to be there right away to cancel it, while mass culture clubs are full and their owners undisturbed. During summer, things are a little different as we did some outdoor shows, but both winters were hopeless. What is certain is that we can not continue like this, at the same time that many performances are taking place all over Europe. We must finally feel a little alive!
As we come to the end of this interview, I leave this space completely up to you to add whatever comes to mind. Thanks again Downwinder for agreeing to answer my questions! Make punk a threat again!
Stefano, thank you very much for your time and for the opportunity to respond in current issues that concern us. Good luck with Disastro Sonoro webzine and we hope to visit Italy at some point to play and chat in person. Cheers!