panos kolias • composer

Before Christmas 2014 I was contacted by Mick Gordon who was looking for someone to write Greek Lyrics for a new character for the game Killer Instinct by Microsoft Studios.
After the Holidays Mick send me the details: needed lyrics for the Aganos character, the music was composed (not produced yet) . Also I was if I could record my voice (on an smartphone or so) so that the singers could hear the pronunciation and sing it as closely. The theme was short so we did not need lots of lyrics, and the idea was to do a “crowd choir shout chant” thing. So I wrote a couple of ideas right away and recorded over the music backing Mick had sent me. Mick loved it. Done!

Or so… Mick liked what I did and my job was done, but I thought maybe I could just record some more of my voice (you know I don’t get ask often to record MY voice, so I may as well take advantage of it) for the singers to have a better idea … so I recorded and recorded and recorded… normal voice, high, low, shouts, growls oh well … and then… I asked my daughter to do the same… and my other daughter… and my wife …and some friends

Long story short: We did our “usual small choir” (as we did for Ryo Ishido’s One and Deane Ogdens’s Radio Mumbai)  and we are all in there somewhere shouting our lungs out. And I say in there somewhere, because  Mick’s crowd choir consists of 461 individual voice recordings singing the Aganos chant.

The lyrics:

Μάχη, Πόλεμος, Νίκη, Πόνος

Δίκη, Πόλεμος, Τρόμος παντού

translate to :

Battle, War, Victory, Pain

Justice, War, Fear everywhere

Here’s the YouTube link on Mick’s channel.