Father Dionysios Tabakis

by Ljós Berinn

He wears the black of sacred scripture and the black of amplifier cabinets. Father Dionysios Tabakis has lived for thirty years in a 15th-century church in Nafplio, but his real altar is a fretless Harley Benton, bought for 135 euros, on which he bends notes into the microtones of Eastern tradition.

Born in Piraeus in 1972, into a family so poor that his parents twice tried not to have him, he learned Byzantine music from priests because there was no money for conservatories. His first guitar was made of plastic, won at a village festival; later he built one out of nails and wire on a wooden board. Today, in his home crammed with instruments — qanun, oud, cümbüş, lyra, ney, baglamas — the priest transforms the millennia-old chants of the liturgy into a sound that oscillates between drone metal, hypnotic techno and suspended ambient. A bridge thrown between East and West, between the silence of a nave and the roar of an amplifier, between the promised paradise and the earth we tread every day.

For years, his wife Foteini asked him to make less noise. Then, in April 2026, the noise became revelation. "Paradise Metal", his debut album, was released in just 150 cassette copies and sold out within hours.
Tabakis, who doesn't consider himself a particularly talented musician, regards all this with the same wonder one reserves for a miracle: "Good and evil always arrive uninvited. That is the unexpected beauty of life."

In September 2026 he will perform live for the first time at the Making Time Festival in Philadelphia. The Orthodox priest who has spent his life singing for God is now ready to sing for the world.
Because what Father Tabakis has created is not just music: it is an act of transmutation.