There is a superstition in certain Greek villages that one should never answer a door on the first knock. Legend holds that it may be a Vrykolakas, an undead creature that roams the night calling out the names of the living. If one answers, death is said to follow within days, and the victim rises to join the ranks of the damned. It is this specific, deeply unsettling figure from folklore—not the suave, blood-drinking aristocrat of Western fiction, but a revenant more akin to a ghoul or plague-spreader—that the Japanese symphonic metal band Ghost Cries has chosen as the subject of its fourth full-length album.
The announcement of ‘Vrykolakas,’ scheduled for release on September 24, 2025, via Repentless Records, is more than the unveiling of a new record; it is a declaration of profound artistic and intellectual intent. For a band from Tokyo to reach across continents and centuries to unearth such a niche mythological entity is a deliberate act of cultural excavation.
The Vrykolakas is a creature born of sacrilege, excommunication, or improper burial—a monster whose very existence is a punishment for social or spiritual transgression. It does not merely kill; it consumes flesh, particularly the liver, and can bring epidemics to entire communities.
This choice of subject poses a compelling question: Why has this ancient, flesh-eating horror from the Aegean captured the imagination of a modern Japanese metal band, and what can its story tell us about our own fraught historical moment?
The Unbroken Circle
The ambition of ‘Vrykolakas’ is rooted in the trajectory of its creators. Formed in Tokyo in 2008, initially under the name Morpheuminous, Ghost Cries has spent over a decade and a half meticulously honing its craft.
Their evolution can be traced through a trilogy of formidable albums: the 2015 debut ‘Melum Primus,’ followed by 2017’s ‘Deorum Festum,’ and the pivotal 2021 release, ‘Purgatorium.’ Each record marked a step forward in compositional complexity and thematic depth, establishing the band as a significant force in Japan’s thriving metal scene.
Yet, it is the band’s modern incarnation that has set the stage for ‘Vrykolakas.’ The current lineup—comprising guitarists Mitchy and You, bassist Yuta, drummer Manabu, and keyboardist Elly—was solidified with the arrival of vocalist Any in 2018. Her commanding presence and versatile delivery, capable of shifting from guttural roars to soaring, clean melodies, became the final, crucial element in the band’s sonic arsenal.
‘Purgatorium’ served as the powerful opening statement for this new era, a demonstration of a re-energized and cohesive creative unit. Now, four years later, ‘Vrykolakas’ arrives not as the work of a band in transition, but as the confident and definitive expression of a stable, tested partnership. It is the product of a sextet that has found its voice and is now prepared to use it to tell its most ambitious story yet.
Anatomy of a Half-Light
The first piece of that story has been unveiled in the form of the lead single and accompanying music video, ‘Last Dhampir.’ The track is a masterful piece of what the band terms “dramatic death metal,” a fitting descriptor for its potent blend of ferocity and theatricality.
The song’s architecture is built upon the dynamic interplay between Elly’s sweeping, orchestral keyboard arrangements and the immense, down-tuned guitar assault of Mitchy and You. This is the core of the Ghost Cries sound: a symphony of opposites, where baroque grandeur collides with the brutal velocity of extreme metal.
At the heart of this maelstrom is Any’s vocal performance, which guides the listener through the song’s narrative with breathtaking control. The lyrics, however, reveal the album’s true thematic core. “As we are the grievers, abandoned from the light,” she sings, “loneliness possessed our mind.” This is not a song told from the perspective of the fearful living, but from that of the damned themselves.
The dhampir—a tragic figure in folklore, born of a vampire and a human, belonging to neither world—becomes the protagonist. The song is a lament, but it is also an anthem of defiance and solidarity. The chorus swells with a desperate, collective hope: “Here we are, stand as one. Maybe someday we can touch the sun, oh brothers!.”
This perspective reframes the entire Vrykolakas myth. The album is not simply a horror story; it is a tragedy told from the inside, a chronicle of the ostracized and the monstrous who, despite their damnation, still search for light. ‘Last Dhampir’ sets the expectation for an album that finds heroism in the grotesque and humanity in the monstrous.
Myth as Metaphor
The choice of the Vrykolakas, when viewed through the lens of ‘Last Dhampir,’ becomes an act of profound metaphorical resonance. The creature’s specific attributes, as detailed in Greek folklore, are not merely gruesome details but powerful symbols.
For a society still grappling with the trauma of a global pandemic, a monster that functions as a spreader of disease carries an immediate and visceral weight. The Vrykolakas is a walking contagion, a physical manifestation of the fear that a single person can bring ruin to a community.
Furthermore, its origins in excommunication and sacrilege speak directly to modern anxieties surrounding social alienation. The Vrykolakas is the ultimate outcast, damned not necessarily for an evil act, but for being outside the accepted norms of society. This provides a rich allegorical framework for exploring themes of otherness, persecution, and the creation of monsters through social decree.
Even the creature’s unsettling habit of knocking on doors and calling out names can be read as a metaphor for an inescapable past, a creeping trauma, or an insidious ideology that seeks to convert and consume. By engaging with these specific folkloric elements, Ghost Cries is performing a sophisticated act of cultural translation, using the ancient myth as a vessel to contain and articulate distinctly contemporary fears.
A Symphony for the Damned
This thematic depth is matched by the band’s musical placement. Ghost Cries operates within the tradition of symphonic black and death metal, a subgenre born in the 1990s from the desire to fuse extreme metal’s raw aggression with the compositional complexity and emotional palette of classical and orchestral music.
The genre’s history is rooted in the pioneering work of European bands like Norway’s Emperor and the United Kingdom’s Cradle of Filth, who first demonstrated how sorrowful keyboard melodies could enrich, rather than dilute, a furious sonic assault.
Ghost Cries stands as a vital twenty-first-century inheritor of this tradition, proving the genre’s global reach and its capacity for regional interpretation. While their sound shares a lineage with their European forebears and contemporaries like Carach Angren or Fleshgod Apocalypse, it is distinguished by a uniquely Japanese melodic sensibility—a certain grace and sorrow woven into the fabric of their heaviest moments.
This singular vision is further solidified by the fact that guitarist Mitchy serves as the album’s producer, mixer, and mastering engineer, ensuring a cohesive and uncompromised sound from conception to completion. They are not merely replicating a European sound; they are contributing to its evolution, forging a distinct branch on the symphonic metal tree.
Conclusion: The Echo of a Fatebreaker
The album’s tracklist begins with a title that feels like a mission statement: ‘Echoes of The Fatebreaker’. With ‘Vrykolakas,’ Ghost Cries seems poised to break its own fate, to transcend its status as a celebrated domestic act and make an indelible mark on the international stage.
The album is an act of breaking with convention—by unearthing a myth far from the genre’s beaten path, by choosing to tell its story from a startlingly empathetic perspective, and by honing their unique sound to a razor’s edge. The knock at the door is no longer a distant echo from a forgotten legend. It is the sound of a band announcing its arrival, and ‘Vrykolakas’ promises to be a landmark release, not just for Ghost Cries, but for the genre as a whole in 2025.
The Vrykolakas myth often deals with figures cast out from society for their beliefs or actions. How does Ghost Cries’ exploration of the outcast in ‘Last Dhampir’ connect with your own interpretation of rebellion and solidarity within the broader culture of heavy metal?
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