Inner Voice

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Hello everyone! I’m George “Inner Voice” Stavropoulos and I live for two reasons: The first and best is Jesus Christ, who is my God and Saviour and the second is for heavy metal! I was born in Athens and raised until my 7th birthday in Thessaloniki, but in 1986 we moved to Athens in Tavros. My school years were quiet until I discovered heavy metal at the age of 16. This incident literally changed my life! My first band was at school when I was 18 in 1997. We wanted to do a gig to raise money for our 5-day excursion. We wanted to play rock and greek rock covers. I was playing the guitar, but because there were two guitars already, I played the bass! I knew nothing of the bass, but I managed to work it out! The guitar player and singer of the band (which, by the way, didn’t had a name) was Vaggelis Kleidaras, a man who helped me a lot in learning some basic stuff in how to play in a band. The gig took place in the school’s amphitheater and went pretty well, so we decided to continue. We played several gigs and we had good reviews. But unfortunately the band split up after a year, due to some problems with the members. At that time, when I was in a night school, I met some youngsters from high school who rehearsed in the amphitheater. They were going to participate in the annual student’s festival in Tavros and they wanted to play metal covers, but they didn’t had a singer. I proposed to them myself! We played 5 covers: Iron Maiden-Wasting Love & Fear of the dark, Judas Priest-Breaking the Law, Metallica-For whom the bell tolls and Adrenalini-Xylina Spathia (!!!!!). So, after the gig, Fatal Infinity were born. We continued playing for almost a year too. Meanwhile, the bass player of Fatal Infinity, John Fasoulakis (now guitarist of Odes Of Ecstacy) was playing guitar in a band called Angel Drop. The other guitarist was George Chararis (now guitarist of Strikelight).They were searching for a singer and decided to audition me. The band had already recorded a promo tape, “The Path of Blame” with female vocals, but they wanted something else. So, I joined the band in summer 1998. The music was a mixture of heavy/power/thrash metal. Fatal Infinity split up so I was fully focused on this band. We played our fist gig in Woodstock Club and the line-up was: George Stavropoulos-vocals, John Fasoulakis-guitar, George Chararis-guitar, Dani Kalamatianos-bass & John Volakakis-drums. Kalamatianos left the band after a while and I took over the bass along with the vocals and we found a keyboard player, Sarantos Goumakos. We recorded a promo cd with the self-titled song in it, but because my vocals was not efficient at the time, Vaggelis Panagopoulos (ex Hourglass S.O.E.) helped us with the vocals. Later on, Volakakis left and John Chalkidis (ex Hourglass S.O.E. also) helped us with the drums. With this line-up the band was stronger than ever and had all the potential to do something great. But this never happened. Both Panagopoulos & Chalkidis had major obligation with Hourglass, so they couldn’t go on. So that was the end of Angel Drop. It was so disappointing for me... I was also singing in two other bands when Fatal Infinity split, Disintegration (thrash) & Requiem (heavy). With Disintegration we recorded a self-titled demo in summer 2000. But these projects didn’t work out as well... After all these failed attempts, I told myself that I was never going to play heavy metal again, so I joined a band who was playing rock covers. I met my buddy Vaggelis Kleidaras again and I was singing covers from Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Ugly Kid Joe, Pearl Jam, The Doors etc. I named the band Inner Voice, but it wasn’t the final name. We also had played an early version of “Undying Love”, which was recorded later on with Strikelight on our self-titled cd. Nothing again...the band split also! Then George Chararis came back in the picture (which, by the way, were very good friends and hanged out together) and formed a band that was in a style of a heavy rock Christian genre with greek lyrics called Ioil (a prophet from the Old Testament). The band reformed after a live appearance and had a new name: Dia Pyros kai Sidirou (in English this is translated as Between the Hammer & the Anvil). We recorded a demo which was never finished (and I don’t know if it will!) and we still exist as a studio band only. It was 2002 already when Chararis met Thodoris Vogiatzis, the bass player of Strikelight at the No Name metal club in Pireaus. He was looking for a guitarist and when the band’s singer left, George proposed me to Vogiatzis. We played two live shows in Rodeo club and at Davaki Square in Kallithea in summer 2002. I saw the flame in these youngster’s eyes (he was only eighteen) and reminded me of myself when I first started...so I was back into metal again! And that was the beginning of a beautiful journey...The rest are mentioned in Strikelight’s home page (www.strikelight.net) and in www.myspace.com/strikelight. Unfortunately all journeys have an end... As for Jesus? Well, that’s another story, which can be discussed with anyone who is open-minded and wants love and goodnes to prevail to this world...God Bless you all!!