Artist Portrait – Vasilis Georgiou

Born in Larissa, on September 18th 1980, Vasilis studied graphic design in Thessaloniki and started singing at sixteen years old. Over the years he formed his own singing style which can be heard in any of the bands he has fronted since then. His first musical influences were not only metal as he listened to many different genres as well as radio. The most important influences, however, were Conception and Kamelot, and as far as singers goes – Roy Khan. Apart from these, Vasilis also liked Fates Warning, Queensrÿche, Dream Theater, Crimson Glory, Pain of Salvation and other more underground bands. Before entering the music industry, while still in high school, he has been in a number of nameless bands, not recording anything, just playing with friends in Larissa and discovering the intricacies of writing music. Jamming and playing everything from Sting to Beatles, from James Brown to Michael Jackson, continued also while he was studying in Thessaloniki. Following the suggestion of a friend, he recorded some demos, which were never released. Around the same time he began singing for a local band with which he recorded a full album, that couldn’t be released, due to various conditions.

His first proper release came with “Deliverance of Soul” by Black Fate from 2009. He was 25 when he recorded it and the album shows a lot of his vocal potential (listen to “Angry silent scream” or “If the silence was grey”). However, prior to his ventures with Black Fate, there was Innosense. Vasilis created the band around 2005-2006 together with his friend and drummer of Remainstill, Michael Maroulis. After the line-up was completed by bassist Vasilis Liakos, Nikos Tsiogas on keyboards and guitarist Aristotelis Papageorgiou, the band played various live gigs and released the demo “Life” in 2007 which contains only 2 songs – “On and On” and “The Fall”. They played with Sieges Even, Evergrey, Fates Warning and Mayfair and in 2011 the band released its only album to date, “Outcast” (which can be found on youtube). They had other material in the works for another album, but that never materialized as each of them had other priorities, and it seems to be a closed chapter in Vasilis’s musical career.

However, Black Fate was not over and as such, in 2014 the band released its fourth album, “Between Visions & Lies”, a more complex and mature release that contains the singles “Rhyme of the False Orchestra” and "Lines in the Sand". The band’s history goes back to 1992, and is one of oldest active bands from Larissa. Vasilis used to listen to it when he was 14-15 years old and cites Heracles Fanarakis (who sang on the band’s demos) as one of his first influences and reasons for staring to sing. In between releases with Innosense, he approached the drummer of Black Fate and suggested they do a project together, which materialized in the album “Deliverance of Souls”, re-released in 2016 by Ulterium Records.