Drone metal guitarist Dionysios Tabakis answers fascism and homophobia claims

Father Dionysios Tabakis, the Greek Orthodox priest who became an unlikely name in experimental music this year as a drone metal guitarist, has published a statement answering two sets of accusations against him. Pitchfork obtained the statement, dated August 25, and Metal Injection published it in full days later.

The first concerns his writing. Pitchfork reported that two posts from 2024, on a WordPress blog whose title translates as The Doors The Doors, refer to gay people with the Greek word for Sodomites and describe the same-sex marriage bill ratified by the Hellenic Parliament that year as a sodomitic monstrosity. Metal Injection reported the same two posts, noting they went up around the time Greece became the first Orthodox-majority country to legalize same-sex marriage.

Tabakis did not address the wording. "My view on homosexuality is the same as that of the Orthodox Church for 2000 years, nothing more, nothing less," he wrote, and said gay people are owed love and acceptance because many have been rejected by their families. He described hearing confession from gay parishioners over the years, and embracing a young man who, by his account, was relieved to be made to feel accepted.

The language of sin runs through that section of the letter. "It is better to sin with freedom than to be virtuous with oppression," Tabakis wrote, which Pitchfork read as an implicit description of gay attraction as sin. Both outlets note that he never engages with the specific words used in the 2024 posts.

The second accusation concerns a video from 2013 that resurfaced. It shows a priest performing an agiasmos, a blessing ceremony, at the opening of an office for Golden Dawn. Pitchfork reported that a December 2019 Facebook post by the Argolida Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist Front identifies the priest in the footage as Tabakis. Both outlets describe Golden Dawn as a neo-Nazi organization that held seats in the Greek Parliament between 2015 and 2019 and was designated a criminal group in 2020, with its leadership later sentenced over murder, assault and weapons offences.

Tabakis says he was sent. He discussed the ceremony in a YouTube video posted on August 21 and again in the statement, saying his superior authority, the Metropolis, assigned him to it as the priest covering Nafplio, that Golden Dawn was a legal party represented in parliament at the time, and that he has performed the same ceremony for other political and municipal groups across 31 years as a priest. "I detest both nationalism and borders," he said in the video, and wrote that his grandparents in Crete fought Hitler and Nazism. He ties the same idea to his instrument, saying he takes the frets off his guitar so he can play without them. The dates do not line up cleanly: both outlets put Golden Dawn's parliamentary seats at 2015 to 2019, while Tabakis says the party was represented when the 2013 ceremony took place.

Heat Crimes, the Greek label that released his debut album Paradise Metal, sent the same clarification to both outlets. It argues that Greek Orthodox priests routinely bless homes, shops, businesses, schools and public institutions, and that an invitation from a politician or a political organization does not by itself show that the priest or the church endorses it. "The important distinction is between performing a religious blessing and giving a political endorsement," the label wrote.

Tabakis closed by stepping back. He wrote that he wants his hermitism back and to keep uploading music to his channel, and that his path as an Orthodox priest differs from values held within contemporary experimental music festivals. He had been booked for Making Time in Philadelphia next month; Pitchfork updated its piece to say he has since pulled out. Paradise Metal had earned him profiles in The Guardian and the New York Times and a 7.6 from Pitchfork before any of this surfaced. More metal sits on the genre hub, alongside Charley Crockett explaining why he dropped a band from his shows and Loyle Carner's Reading set aimed at the far right.