Drone Metal Priest Father Dionysios Tabakis Addresses Fascism And Homophobia Accusations Ahead Of First-Ever Live Set

In June, Father Dionysios Tabakis announced he was getting ready to play his first-ever live set at Philadelphia's Making Time fest, which goes down next month. However, the viral Greek Orthodox priest behind the acclaimed drone metal LP Paradise Metal faced backlash after old blog posts of his resurfaced. Two posts from 2024 referred to gay people as "Sodomites" and gay marriage as a "sodomitic monstrosity." It was also discovered that in 2013 he performed a sanctification at the offices of Golden Dawn, a Greek neo-Nazi organization. He addressed the criticism in a new statement.In the statement, obtained by Pitchfork, Tabakis wrote, "My view on homosexuality is the same as that of the Orthodox Church for 2000 years, nothing more, nothing less. We owe homosexual people love and acceptance because many have at times experienced great rejection from their environment, especially from their families." He also said that it is "better to sin with freedom than to be virtuous with oppression." As for the sanctification, he clarified that Golden Dawn was represented in the Greek Parliament and was a legal political party at the time (it's now a criminal group as of 2020). "I am against Na...