Spartan have released "Alcibiades", the second of five singles that will eventually stand as The Peloponnesian War, a concept EP the band are issuing one song at a time.
The subject is the Athenian commander who changed sides twice and finished trusted by nobody. The chorus calls him a maestro of betrayal, and a spoken passage at the end lets him answer: what he wanted was to be remembered, and the cities he served were a means to it. That is a reading of Alcibiades that historians have argued over for two thousand years, and it fits inside three minutes and forty six seconds.
Musically it is the band's usual collision, twin guitar leads and power metal melody under harsh vocals, which is why the Greek material has never sounded like a gimmick on them. "Critias" came in September. Socrates, Lysander and Cyrus follow, each with its own artwork by Pedro Sena.
The recording team is the one from Of Kings And Gods: Jakob Herrmann cut the drums at Top Floor Studios in Gothenburg and Jacob Hansen mixed in Denmark. The band have been working this seam since For Glory in 2009, and Rotting Christ's Sakis Tolis sang on The Fall Of Olympus in 2015.