There are songs that aren’t
born simply to fill silence, but to crack open the walls of their era. The
“Zeibekiko” (also known as “With Airplanes and Steamships”) that Dionysis
Savvopoulos carved into Vromiko Psomi in 1972 is not a typical laiko
tune for the nightclubs of oblivion. It is a ritual, an otherworldly bridge.
Drop the needle into the vinyl’s grooves and scrape the surface of history, and
you uncover a startling truth: this piece — in its soul, its structure, and its
destiny — pulses with the dark, uncompromising DNA of underground heavy metal
and punk rock.
The Cellar of Smyrna and the Birth of the Outsider
To grasp the weight of this
anthem, you must return to its roots. The zeibekiko was never a cheerful dance;
it was the secret rite of the Zeibeks — rebel warriors of Asia Minor who lived
in the mountains under their own unwritten laws, defying Ottoman authority.
Their dance was a solitary, heavy confrontation with death before battle. Pure,
primordial heavy‑metal thematics, centuries before electricity existed.
In 1922, uprooted and hunted,
these people arrive on Greek shores. Official society treats them as
foreigners, as contamination. Isolated, they retreat into “secret cellars” and
turn their pain into rebetiko. Rebetiko became Greece’s first authentic
underground — the music of outcasts who refused to assimilate into the polished
lifestyle of the time.
[1922: Asia Minor Refugees /
Rebetiko] ───► Resistance to Alienation ◄─── [1972: New Generation / Rock]
1972: The Junta’s Paranoia and the Electric Voices
Fifty years later, in 1972,
history repeats itself in another form. Greece is trapped under the
Dictatorship. Savvopoulos, having tasted the brutality of the Security Police
cells, locks himself in a suffocating hotel room in Thessaloniki. The internal
pressure, the fear, and the thirst for freedom distort the musical form. He
tries to write a laiko song, but the era’s rage mutates it into
something mournful, unbearable, experimental.
In this darkness, the new
generation also feels foreign in its own homeland. It thirsts for democracy, is
hunted, and searches for its own refuge. This time, the weapon is not the baglamas,
but the electric voices of rock.
“With airplanes and
steamships, and with our old friends / we wander in the darkness, yet you still
don’t hear us / with electric voices.”
Savvopoulos realizes that the
scream of rock is the direct continuation of the refugees’ lament. When, in
1975, he invites Sotiria Bellou to perform the piece, he stages a brilliant
artistic contradiction: a granite voice, shaped in prisons and the rebetiko
underworld, comes to sing about the electricity of the new generation. The old
underground hands the torch to the new.
When Bellou left the studio
muttering, “They told me to sing a zeibekiko and you made me sing pop,” she
couldn’t imagine that what had just been born was a raw, electric dirge — a
rock mentality disguised in 9/8.
The Musical Anatomy of Darkness: 9/8 and the Modes
If we break down “Zeibekiko”
musically, we see why it touches the deepest veins of extreme underground
metal.
Its rhythm is asymmetrical,
“limping,” heavy. The 9/8 meter — common in progressive, doom, and sludge metal
— creates a sense of threat, instability, and existential mud.
At the same time, its Asia
Minor origins bring the Eastern modes (makams like Hijaz). These scales carry
inherent darkness and a ritual, epic melancholy. They are the very same musical
foundations used today by global underground metal bands — from Greece’s own
Rotting Christ and Villagers of Ioannina City to the broader oriental and folk‑metal
spectrum — to evoke a sense of ceremonial catharsis.
“Underground Tunnels” and Vromiko Psomi as a Global Manifesto
“We wander in the darkness…
inside underground tunnels.” “In this land, those who love eat dirty bread.”
Here lies the song’s most
prophetic, literary gesture. The “underground tunnels” are the very definition
of the Underground — the vital space where freedom of expression survives. Far
from the spotlight, censorship, and the sterility of the mainstream, art
remains free, wild, authentic. In the absolute darkness of the basement, the new
is always conceived.
This is where “Zeibekiko”
meets Heavy Metal and Punk Rock on a global scale. These movements were born in
the margins and the working classes. They were hunted down by every kind of authority:
- Democratic systems, through moral panic, court cases, and public
outrage (Punk in ’77 Britain, Metal in ’80s America).
- Authoritarian regimes, where metalheads were arrested behind the Iron
Curtain.
- Religious establishments, which saw the electric distortion as the devil
himself.
Yet underground Metal and Punk
remained the uncompromising voice of youth refusing to conform. “Dirty bread”
became their ethos — the choice of the difficult, independent path. They don’t
sell lifestyle. They don’t get bought. They survive with teeth and nails,
isolated in basement rehearsal rooms and tiny clubs, screaming their own truths
while official culture simply chooses not to listen.
The Final Catharsis
Whether you’re thrashing in
the mosh pit of an underground metal show, sweating in a punk gig, or closing
your eyes as Bellou’s crushing voice tears through the air in 9/8, the feeling
of catharsis is the same — unified and indivisible. It is the need to exorcise
your demons, to stand tall against the hardships of your era, and to find your
own “old friends” — your own “hard generation.”
Savvopoulos’ “Zeibekiko” was,
is, and will remain Heavy Metal. Because metal is not defined by how loud you
turn up your guitar amp; it is defined by how proudly you stand before the
darkness, singing from your own underground.
Nick Parastatidis
