Greek Orthodox priest Father Dionysios Tabakis releases Paradise Metal, bringing doom, dubstep and religious themes into church musical debate

Father Dionysios Tabakis, an ordained Orthodox priest in Greece, has released Paradise Metal, a home-recorded mix of doom metal, Christmas carols and religious dubstep that has unexpectedly pulled him from local obscurity into broader music discussions. In a profile published July 2, Tabakis described his goal as reconciling what he calls a misunderstanding in church teaching with an instrument and sound he believes can be used to express faith rather than reject it.

Tabakis, 53, spoke from his flat in Nafplio, a city on Greece’s Peloponnese coast, surrounded by musical instruments and religious icons. He said he believes the electric guitar, including the distorted “waves” he hears in it, can serve a spiritual message rather than tempt listeners away from it. He is quoted saying, “The devil cannot create something. God has created all,” linking his view of music-making to a theology of creation.

The profile says Tabakis’s church tradition has historically treated instruments and secular tunes as satanic and as a threat to family life and modesty. Tabakis framed his own instrument use as part of a “one-man mission” to shift how the electric guitar is discussed within that religious context, characterizing it as “a bit misunderstood in the church” and commonly thought to be “of the devil.”

According to the article, Tabakis’s favorite instrument is an adapted Harley Benton R-457, purchased for about €135. The piece describes the guitar’s chords as “more wobbly and atonal than those of an ordinary guitar,” while also producing a warmer tone that Tabakis compares to the cadence of the human voice. The album’s distorted texture, the profile says, is built around the guitar’s characteristic ripples of distortion.

Paradise Metal, the article reports, prompted a rapid leap in attention earlier this year after Pitchfork issued a critics’ score of 7.6, described in the profile as higher than the outlet’s previously assigned scores for Aphex Twin’s Drukqs and Daft Punk’s Discovery. Tabakis’s project is depicted as spanning multiple styles rather than adhering to a single genre, blending doom metal with religious dubstep and including holiday material described as Christmas carols.

The Guardian profile characterizes the record as a cult success with growing reach and highlights Tabakis’s transition from a private practice to a public-facing cultural moment. It also underscores the tension at the heart of the project, with Tabakis’s stated aim to preserve religious meaning while making use of an instrument his church associates with spiritual risk. The article does not indicate whether church leadership has formally endorsed or formally criticized his approach, focusing instead on Tabakis’s own explanation of his choices.

For listeners, Paradise Metal functions as both a sound experiment and a test case for how contemporary electronic and heavy-music aesthetics can be translated into religious themes. For Tabakis and his community, the immediate next step is likely to be how wider audiences respond to the album’s insistence that faith and distortion-heavy music can coexist, and whether that response leads to further discussion inside the church about instruments, youth exposure and family standards.

In the meantime, Paradise Metal’s visibility following the Pitchfork score positions Tabakis’s music as a current reference point for debates about worship, performance and interpretation of doctrine in modern sound. The album’s release also raises practical questions for listeners, churches and distributors about how such works are categorized, marketed and reviewed, particularly when they cross boundaries between religious messaging and mainstream genre scenes.