His image looks like it came straight out of a rock concert. A black AC/DC T-shirt — the trademark of a band that sings about the devil and hell, with millions of fans showing up at concerts throwing the horns. A shirt that makes you expect to hear Highway to Hell blasting at full volume, not church hymns. And yet, this shirt wasn’t worn at a concert, but in a monastery, surrounded by icons of saints and the scent of incense. The scene is so unexpected it feels like it carries humor on its own: the AC/DC fan “meets” Saint John the Theologian, and instead of Thunderstruck, you hear Kyrie Eleison.
This is Christoforos Laskos, a doctor in the Greek NHS, Senior Registrar in General Medicine at a Health Center in central Tzoumerka, and father of six children. A man who balances daily between two seemingly incompatible worlds — Byzantine chanting and heavy metal music. For him, though, the contrast is only superficial. In reality, he sees a hidden kinship binding them together: power. The power of faith on one hand, the power of sound on the other. His relationship with music began very early. In his school years, he was initiated into Byzantine music, learning hymns, scales, monophony. Later, during his university years, heavy metal burst into his life, with guitars, drums, intensity, and energy.
“I found myself moving in parallel worlds,” he says. “In the art of chanting and in my metal band, at the church cantor’s stand and in the basement studio.” That’s when he started to feel that these two worlds don’t clash but converse. “The real bond came literally with the phrase Kyrie Eleison. I would chant it silently, wrapping it in a metal sound and rhythm.”
His public image caused a stir when he uploaded a video from the monastery of Patmos. Christoforos chants with reverence, while his overall appearance — and especially the AC/DC shirt — attracts all eyes. Some were thrilled, others were shocked. He responds calmly: “I didn’t intend to scandalize. I wanted to provoke a small inner self-criticism about being and seeming.” For him, that image works like a bridge between two worlds that seem unrelated but, in essence, share something in common: passion, power, and grandeur. In another video he uploaded, he chants together with a patient the Apolytikion of Saint Demetrios.
A scene that goes beyond the narrow boundaries of medical practice. “I like being direct with my patients. I treat them as my own people. Chanting clears the mind, consoles the sorrowful, gives strength to those being tested. It’s not medicine, but it is therapy for soul and body.” There, among medicines and tests, chanting functioned as another form of healing — a reminder that health is both physical and spiritual.
From this dual journey was born his boldest venture yet: the project ΔYNAMIS and the album Byzantine Metal, released in September 2025 by Symmetric Records in collaboration with musician and producer Bob Katsionis.
The idea was to take authentic verses from Orthodox hymnography, without translation, shape them into songs, and “dress” them with metal orchestration — without altering the chanting tradition. “The goal was co-creation,” he says. “The coexistence of Byzantine music with metal. Two worlds that share common elements: power, grandeur, intensity, unity.”
In his mind, there already exists the image of a majestic concert. He dreams of an evening with a symphonic orchestra, Byzantine and European choir, guitars and drums — a monumental blending of traditions. Not in churches, since “we do not want to replace the ecclesiastical use of chanting,” he explains, but in open spaces, with an artistic and communicative purpose: to bring this sound to people who have never been exposed to chanting. At first, Christoforos had doubts. Such a fusion, he thought, might be seen as provocative. To find answers, he turned to his spiritual father. “I shared my concerns with him. After he listened to the songs, he told me: ‘Go ahead! You have my blessing!’” From then on, he continued without hesitation. “If it is from God, it will flourish. If not, let it fade away, starting with me.”
The reactions vindicated him. The young metal audience embraced the project with enthusiasm, while established artists, such as Stamatis Spanoudakis, also spoke warmly about it in public. Reviews from international music portals were ecstatic. Everything showed that what for years had been just an idea had finally found its path.
Raising six children
But his life is not only about stage, music, and chants. It is also a daily routine filled with responsibilities, bills, expenses, and the effort of raising six children in rural Greece. “We try with patience and trust in God, despite the financial pressures we face as a very large family,” he says. “We are not entitled to a large-family allowance, our children are considered tax burdens, taxation is high, the cost of living unbearable. The necessary van has exorbitant road taxes, rent is high even though we live in a remote village.” The family strives to be self-sufficient, to distinguish the necessary from the superfluous, to live simply. “I expect nothing from the modern state. We do not complain, we do not fear.”
His children are happy to see him creative, calm, and devoted. They don’t see him only as a doctor, or a musician, or a chanter. They see him as a father who stands by their side. “That’s why they sometimes call me ‘metal father,’” he says with a smile. For Christoforos, music is not only art. It is faith, expression, and healing all at once. “It is a gift from God,” he emphasizes. “It can lift man up to God or drive him away. Discernment is needed. Our music, through ΔYNAMIS, seeks to convey the spiritual power of Orthodox hymnography.”
In reality, everything he does — medicine, music, family — comes together in a single word: power. The power of tradition, the power of faith, the power of music. And perhaps that is where the secret of the heavy metal doctor from Tzoumerka lies: in uniting worlds that seem foreign, yet speak the same language. A language that brings side by side AC/DC and Saint John the Theologian, the psalm and the electric guitar, the cantor’s stand and the studio, the doctor and the father, man and God.
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