Biography
Ant on Troubled Pine is a progressive rock/metal band from Greece - Thessaloniki. For us music is not only a raw material, waiting to be shaped by the artist. In contrast to that belief, we choose to interpret it as something that can shape us as well.
More like a horse that you can ride towards a direction of your choice, but still has a mind and a will of its own. When messing with harmony and melodies we gladly rediscover again and again that no matter how hard we try to predetermine their course, the results never seize to amaze and lead us to different, more bizarre but non the less beautiful paths.
As long as you take the time to let those sounds guide you and trust your vision into their hands, you are bound to gain a little more knowledge and become a little wiser in the process. It is not different to our lives. No matter how hard we try, there will always be another harder obstacle in our way. And the older we get, the more we find out that our wisdom is just of an insignificant amount, inside a vast ocean of truth.
Thus, we chose progressive for the grand freedom it is allowing us. We like to be identified with the general term of progressive rock/metal, because we dislike labels and absolutes. In reality we are just grownup students of music, trying to express our feelings, concerns and beliefs about everything that life throws in our way.
No matter what we have to face, music will always be there for us. Our base is Thessaloniki, a city with a vast and rich music history and tradition. We always try our best as self-proclaimed artists and as a group of friends. People that like bands such as Haken, Pain of salvation, Porcupine Tree or Dream Theater, may want to give us a chance. However, we welcome every friend who wants to honor us by listening to our music.
Ant on Troubled Pine is Konstantinos Christopoulos (guitars, vocals) and Adam Pefkos (bass).
Not really sure if I should call this an EP. I guess that lengthwise it qualifies as such. In reality 1924 is just an unusually large song, consisting of smaller parts (chapters). It was meant to be that big since its pre planning phase that started years ago and its composition and recording were definitely new territories for us. I could fill pages describing all the setbacks and misfortunes that we had to endure while working on the project, but let’s just say that we are really glad to have it finished. 1924 is a passionate project inspired by the British expedition of the same year with the goal of summiting Mount Everest. The mission was concluded with the disappearance and deaths of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine at the 8th or 9th of June. Mallory’s body was found in 1999, but even before his discovery their attempt to summit had initiated countless debates of whether they have achieved or not.
I first came into contact with this story in 1999, reading about it in a children’s newspaper and since then it has haunted me. I would forget it for long periods of time and then start researching it again. It was one of those stories that never really left me. Since I got into songwriting from an early age and was always searching for inspirational ideas to help me write better lyrics, it is very weird that it had not dawned on me to use this one much sooner than we eventually did. I am very glad now that it did not happen, because I am afraid that any early and immature attempt could have never paid to this story the tribute that it deserves.
The song is based a little bit on history and a little bit on imagination. But most of all it is based on metaphor. Because if someone scratches a little under the surface, they will probably find similarities between the story of those two pioneers and the acts of millions upon millions of people. People that have to struggle in life to achieve their goals, but more often than not find out before the end that the goal is less important than the effort taken to achieve it. It is the love of life that motivates us to go on with our everyday struggles. Thus, this is not a song about death but a celebration of life.
Did Mallory and Irvine achieve their goal? If you ask us then we might tell you that it simply doesn’t matter.
Revisiting Shadow People after all these years and giving it a proper description was a perfect way to reminisce. This album was not only our first attempt to produce a full-length record, but also the commence of a new path in our music journey. It was around 2015 that we had decided to unceremoniously ‘’clean our palette’’ by removing all of our previous songs and reinvent Ant on Troubled Pine as a progressive rock act. Progressive rock and metal were already our favorite types of music to listen to, but the catalyst became a song called Tragic Figure. Kostas wrote this song some years prior and later reworked on it so that it would fit our sound better. Thus, after our little purge it became our only song for a small amount of time.
Our lineup was very different back then and included female vocals for the first time. Musically this album was affected a little by the general music movement of that period, that was moving towards more organic sounds with a small 70s rock influence. We used only WAV sounds for the keyboards and some extra instruments here and there (flamenco guitar, saxophone and a variety of traditional Greek percussion). There was no pre-planning for any of those additions and the compositions themselves led us to each decision.
Lyrically Shadow People is a very emotional album. It describes some different types of dreams, it talks about the disillusionment of life, it laments on unrequited love, all the while trying to keep hope alive. More or less the lyrics are written from the point of view of an imaginary character that has the blessing and the course of being a realist and a cynic and struggles to survive in the modern world. The character quickly perceives that he constantly fails to be happy and tries to decipher the true meaning of life and dreams but constantly fails to do so, only to have an enlightenment at the very end.
It is a true snapshot of where our music and philosophical explorations were at the time. We hope that you like it and that you can maybe find some similarities between the concepts it explores and your own lives!