Warlord / Lordian Guard – A Night of Fury with Bill Tsamis…

Warlord / Lordian Guard – A Night of Fury with Bill Tsamis…

I never thought that I’d be able to write these words, but it seems though I must, so the following text will be more like a small testimony.

And so it begins…

Warlord was one of the very first heavy metal bands that I ever listened and loved, as well as the first band with an epic feeling in both the lyrics and the music (Iron Maiden and Manowar came into my life much later). The “W” sign of Warlord, was the first metal sign that I ever drew. The Warlord lyrics are the first metal lyrics that I ever written. The music of Bill Tsamis definitely contributed to who I am today and for that I’m forever grateful.

Having said that, I must also say that during the last 3 years, many things have happened about Warlord that have saddened me deeply. And I will have to share those things here, even if it means reliving them in a way.

Here goes nothing…

I was “Facebook friends” with Bill Tsamis since my first days on Facebook, back in 2008. At that time there was not even the slightest hope of a Warlord reunion. Well, all that changed a couple of years later. But so did many other things. Something was weird about that reunion from the start, at least from my point of view. Of course, Bill Tsamis is dealing with some serious health issues and that was definitely not helping. But I got the feeling in several occasions that he didn’t want to reunite Warlord. And I was proven right. The first problems started to appear. No certain lineup for the band, disagreements about the reissues of some records, bad comments about certain things concerning fans and responses towards Warlord, too much information about Bill’s personal life, and all of the sudden, tidal waves of “hardcore Warlord fans” coming from all over the place. It was just too much to handle.

I will certainly not get into details here, I will only say that all this fuss, didn’t make it any better for me. And then the final blow came from out of nowhere. Bill Tsamis visited the Facebook event page of the Warlord show in Thessaloniki and made all sorts of bad comments about Kreator (!), about the small presale of tickets and about the “all talk – no ticket” type of Warlord fan base. Of course at that point there already were hundreds of Warlord fans who defended (!) that rant and even dissed Kreator themselves! Suddenly Bill Tsamis was a “highly skilled musician and composer who could write better noise than Kreator” (in his own words, I have kept photos of every single comment on that thread). What happened if someone said that he liked Kreator? He “shouldn’t show up for Warlord, because he doesn’t know of good music”. What happened if someone said that he couldn’t afford to go to the Warlord show due to the economic crisis here in Greece? Well, when Bill “was 16 years old he was in economic crisis too, but he saved every last dime to see every last show”. Then why does Warlord come to Greece? Because “Everyone begged and begged Bill Tsamis to come to Greece. He didn’t want to because it was all talk, which seems to be the case for the Principal Club. If only 500 people show up, why bother? Just wait for the live DVD to come out. Why waste your time and money on Warlord? Bill knew this would happen (financial crisis blues) so why should he come?” And more blah-blah-blah… Is anyone disappointed with that statement? Then “Do him a favor and don’t show up because you never cared for Warlord and you are not fans”. And last but not least. “Warlord is nothing more than an insignificant underground metal band (not even a band) and since he has done nothing in 30 years of music career (or lack of one) he shouldn’t come. Warlord is a train wreck and has no relationship with fans whatsoever. So this whole reunion thing was wrong, but now it’s too late to call it off… too bad, huh?”

Of course Bill Tsamis posted an apology about the “Kreator-incident” afterwards, but I didn’t believe any of that.

Warlord always was a controversial band in Greece (as well as Manowar) due to certain people who wrote in magazines and connected the Warlord music with fascism and racism and all sorts of “good values”. I don’t know if Bill Tsamis is a racist or fascist, but I wasn’t all that pleased when I heard him say that “Racism is a part of the nature of man”, during an interview in a Greek metal show in TV, called “TV WAR”. I wasn’t all that pleased, because the narrow-minded fans of Warlord (and they are too many too count) have only kept that part because it suited them more than the “I’m not a racist person” sentence that Bill used to start his answer.

I could go on and on and write about more incidents in the WARLORD FAN CLUB on Facebook, but I’d rather stop here.

I wrote the questions for this interview back in 2012, but due to certain circumstances at that time, they were not answered by Bill Tsamis back then. If I was given the chance to write them once more today, I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. I also didn’t feel like going to the Warlord shows here in Greece, or the several meet-and-greets with the band, or even some other Warlord/Tsamis-related events. At this point, I no longer consider myself a fan of the band anymore. I waited for some months before I wrote this text, hoping that my feelings towards that subject might change, but that didn’t happen. Below you can see the interview in pictures.

As far as I’m concerned, the Warlord has risen, but the fight was lost…