{"id":796512,"date":"2026-10-09T01:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T01:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796512\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T01:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T01:10:11","slug":"villagers-of-ioannina-city-venceremos-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796512\/","title":{"rendered":"Villagers of Ioannina City – Venceremos Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s been seven years since Villagers of Ioannina City released the incredible Age of Aquarius<\/a>, and six since I first heard it. It hasn\u2019t left my regular rotation since, helped by an absolutely crazy live show at 229 in London in 2022. But the world is a different place since 2019. Age of Aquarius was a fundamentally happy record, with some lyrical messages exhorting striving for better buried in a lot of psychedelia. Venceremos, meaning \u201cwe will overcome,\u201d is far more grounded. The psychedelia is almost gone from the lyrics and toned down in the music. Though it remains a Greek folk\/prog rock record, Venceremos is heavier, and lyrically a far more straightforward protest and call to action for life in the 2020s.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, this works out. Venceremos is still immediately identifiable as Villagers of Ioannina City. Greek folk melodies and heavy use of Greek traditional bagpipes and clarinet give the band a unique sound, to a foreign audience at least. Alex Karametis\u2019 vocals are distinctive as well. The songs are long and evolve and shift organically\u2014adopting protest music hasn\u2019t turned them into a punk band. But there is a noticeable shift into prog metal. \u201cHome\u201d and \u201cThe Ruiner\u201d have parts that remind me of Disillusion, both in composition and in sound, particularly a little vocal processing. There\u2019s also a little more of a post-rock twist in places. \u201cNo Fear\u201d in particular reminds me of the emotional post-rock sound of bands like Overhead, the Albatross.<\/p>\n

Venceremos by VIC<\/a><\/p>\n

There are some absolute bangers on Venceremos. \u201cGhosts in the Sky\u201d in particular is fantastic. Building a seven-minute song around fundamentally one melody is a brave choice, but it\u2019s a great melody, and it\u2019s handed off between instruments and vocalists as the song progresses. \u201cHere and Now\u201d is the closest to the more uniform sound of Age of Aquarius, as the longest and most overtly positive song on the record. \u201cThe Ruiner\u201d is bleak, heavy, and discomforting, building up into a furious chant as the song ends. Opening track\u2014other than the obligatory intro\u2014\u201dHome\u201d opens with a clean guitar melody that reassured me that VIC still have it the moment I heard it. You know as the song iterates on it and drifts into an atmospheric section that it\u2019ll be back in the climax, but that doesn\u2019t make it any less effective when it does. There are no weak songs here. Were I to really scrabble around for complaints, the fadeout ending on \u201cNo Fear\u201d is a bit cheap.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a female vocalist on nearly every track. Her appearances are mostly quite subtle, but on the hypnotic opening and bridge of \u201cGhosts in the Sky\u201d and the duet near the end of \u201cVenceremos,\u201d she delivers some of the album\u2019s best moments. She\u2019s uncredited as far as I can tell, which is a bit of a shame. Similarly, Dimitris Brentas on wind instruments is credited in the promo materials but not on the Bandcamp page. I\u2019m not really sure what that\u2019s about, as the tightly integrated traditional instruments are such a big part of what makes Venceremos a success. The main trio are no slouches, of course. I particularly like Akis Zois\u2019 bass work on \u201cVenceremos.\u201d Frontman Alex Karametis isn\u2019t the most technical of vocalists, but he has a very pleasing tone that fits the music well. Likewise, his guitar work is intricate and interesting rather than flashy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d always rather a band evolve than try to recapture the magic of a particularly brilliant album. Venceremos is why. It\u2019s still Villagers of Ioannina City and still excellent, but it does something different, and that means I want to listen to both it and its predecessor. Among many excellent songs, \u201cGhosts in the Sky\u201d is my SotY candidate #1. The 2020s have proven difficult to engage with musically. Venceremos is cathartic, angry, grounded, but still ultimately offers positivity, and that\u2019s exactly what I needed.<\/p>\n

Rating: Excellent
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: Stream\/FLAC
Label: Napalm Records<\/a>
Websites: vicband.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/villagersofioanninacity<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: September 18th, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been seven years since Villagers of Ioannina City released the incredible Age of Aquarius, and six since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[47816,106159,261860,96,22739,36374,36228,128,29437,261861,70633,13572,263,129,250565,56,54,55,261862,261863],"class_list":["post-796512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-47816","tag-4-5","tag-disillusion","tag-entertainment","tag-folk-metal","tag-folk-rock","tag-greek-metal","tag-music","tag-napalm-records","tag-overhead-the-albatross","tag-post-rock","tag-progressive-metal","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sep26","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venceremos","tag-villagers-of-ioannina-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}