Formed in 2004 as Mougra Band, Mary And The Boy during these years produced music for dance shows and theater. Coming from Greece the band is formed by two musicians and a dancer. They first self titled album has a high dramatic and theatrical component and (not only because they’re coming from Greece) the female vocals sometimes remember me of Diamanda Galas. The tracks are based on electronics and guitars but the main part is represented by the vocal parts (both female and male). In this way we have musical experimentations with a melodic structure which is functional to the theatrical aspect of the project. Lyrics deals with sex, death, humiliation and failure and they aren’t descriptive of a particular situation, instead they are like flashes. “Black terror” for example opens with: “Oh black terror. Black whore of silence. That man nailed me down. He took his knife and ripped my heart”. Musically the album opens with a duet with chants and piano just to explode with “Death” where a distorted guitar and a bass line create the right background for a crying woman. The band is good at the creation of these particular dramatic atmospheres and they deserve your attention.

At the end of September mysterious musical trio with dance constituent MARY AND THE BOY will present first official album on underground Greek mini-label and this record already after first listening pleasantly shocked me. And further even more… I simply fell in love with this extraterrestrial lunatic band. In usual conditions I quit rare listen to such a strange and schizophrenic music with tangle of ill-boding and noisy vocal eclectic, caustic and poisonous punk attitude, vulgar sexuality, existential terror and genius psychedelia, but in this case I just can’t to show resistance to dark, sometimes wild, fascinating and unique in it’s own way vocal-instrumental Sabbath of new band. MARY AND THE BOY play absolutely unpredictable musical mystery. I hear in it trembling sounds of invalid synthesizers, strained and sarcastic female singing, wails, breathes, screams and howl, austere male voice, heap of versatile guitar parts and noises, grand organ and additional lo-fi effects. Regardless the distinct dark avantgard direction, band’s songs look very alive, sensitive, inspired, provoking and sexually loaded at the same time. Concerning genre I found on cd interesting refraction of brutal retro-pop, drunken piano punk-brawl, stylish dark cabaret, vampiric gothic, quasi-gospel and even industrial. Vocals of attractive witch Mary undoubtedly will please admirer of Diamanda Galas, Siouxsie Sioux, SWANS, COIL, Tom Waits and other dark personality. All instrumental parts in MARY AND THE BOY tracks are performed in raw, a bit aggressive and crazy live manner. But don’t let it confuse you – album is recorded with great quality and that mannered, grimacing lo-fi aesthetics should be considered as essential attribute. Of course, I can’t recommend such crazy music as MARY AND THE BOY play to everybody. It would be not right from my side, because I have no intention “to traumatize” accidentally psyche of untrained listener. I just appeal to connoisseur s of the most “frostbitten” and non-trivial avant-garde to pay attention on debut album of so far little known band. To my opinion, these artists gave birth to true masterpiece. I hope they will continue to create music in spite of psychiatrists and other punitive institutions. Let the force be with this band and let our wish to listen to their album grow! [10]

Mary & The Boy” – Judged by the lyrics, dealing a lot with religion, the “Boy” in this rather strange project name could be Jesus. Just a wild guess! Never the less this a quite interesting band consisting of three members, that apart from Mary and The Boy also counts an exotic dancer. “Mary & The Boy” is an offshoot of the Greek theatre group “Mougra Band” formed back in 2004. That the band took its starting point in dance shows and theatre is quite obvious as you listen to the project’s self-titled album “Mary & The Boy”. No matter what, this is quite unusual sound experience. A quick description of the expression is something like dark cabaret with stylish elements of Industrial and Noise rock. Despite the electronic approach there is much weight put on acoustic elements such as piano and guitars, just like the electronic parts quite often sound like processed harpsichords. Dominating the album though, is the vocals, first of all the female vocals but also in interaction with a male vocal. The sound production itself reveals the theatrical atmosphere; the works on the album sound like they had been performed live on stage. The drama of the music also comes clear as the relatively quite ancient atmosphere suddenly bursts into an infernal chaos of noisy guitars and electronic experimentalism. As said, this is a very unusual and quite fascinating album.

De la naissance à la mort, cet album symobolise une vie en neuf titres. Des cris du nouveau-né (“Birth”) à, on découvre une musique désaxée, habitée par des cris. Vous pouvez nous appelez comme vous voulez, prévient le groupe, qui tente quelques étiquettes : piano punk, cabaret industriel ou pop brutale. Brutale, oui, la musique de ce duo grec (Mary au chant, The Boy aux instruments, épaulés par le danseur Exotic) est brutale. Mais Mary & the Boy assume son côté “terroriste sonore”, a conscience de choquer et distord les guitares comme les conventions sociales. La traduction des paroles en anglais de “Cock” sont : “je suis une bite, est-ce que tu veux me sucer ?” et le titre contient aussi les mots “drugs” et “necrophilia”. Plus loin, c’est Jésus qui en prend pour son grade. Mary & the Boy malmène la bienséance (beaucoup), les mélodies (un peu), mais pas les oreilles de l’auditeur, à condition qu’entre ces deux oreilles il y ait un cerveau avec des idées très ouvertes. A cette musique noir charbon, les parents prendrons soin de coller le carré blanc. Pour amateurs de senstations fortes.

When I put on a record on Low Impedance¹ I don’t have any expectations, but I certainly did not expect to be confronted with a female voice somewhere between Patti Smith and Anthony Haggerty singing a capella about black terror, newborn children, Jesus and sucking cocks. So I put down whatever I was doing at the moment, sat down and listened. I was in for a ride. When I came back, I was breathing heavily, sweat on my brows, I felt like what people tell me a SM-session leaves you feeling like. Exposed, vulnerable but also stronger and more self conscious. Goddamn.

During these three quarters of an hour I was beaten, mangled, tortured, my soul blackened and then erased, lectured about the depth of moral and psychological decay, wrangled and twisted, stretched out and flattened again, and then set back onto where I was and left there breathing hard. I was confronted with sexual imagery, apocalyptic nightmares, psychotic behaviour and manic sarcasm. Mary and the boy are mercilessly consequential, harsh and straight forward and they take no prisoners. If they want to punch you in the face, figuratively speaking, they will do so. They also don’t mince their words. On top of a massive soundtrack of droning noise organs and guitars and collapsing vaudeville pianos they spit forth big words in big gestures. This trio, Mary (voc), the boy (instruments) and a dancer called Exotic, don’t care for the details, the small or microscopic things, they aim right at the middle with all their force. The various musical parts stand in the room like John Wayne stands in front of a group of men he is instructing to fight a last fight to death. In between these there are holes as big as a canyon to fall into. Heavy shit, indeed.

A lot of people will say this is some kind of cabaret for fans of industrial music, and a lot will mention the Dresden Dolls, but the Dresden Dolls are pop music in comparison. This trio is fucking heavy and pitiless, they burn up a dosis of energy more reminding of Laibach or SPK or early Swans while musically sounding nothing like them. And having been recorded live, makes these songs even rougher around the edges, more brutal and in your face. With the poetic brutality and agressiveness of Lydia Lunch. A lot of people where you always wonder how they lead their every day lives, because from the way they behave on stage or on record you think they must be pretty outwards of what is considered normal by your grandparents. Poor Jesus Wiley.

And then they dense all of this into these songs, that are one massive hunk of sound after the other. Those one word titles of songs stand like a poem of holes punched into the concrete by themselves: “birth. Death. Mama. Cock. Black Terror. Prayer. Jesus. FuckMe. Death.” They give all away that their show is about. Did you realize that “death” is mentioned twice? Fortunately, there seems to be an amount of irony and humour mingled deep into these songs, like the sugar that is used to make salad, but maybe it is just the hope of finding it, that makes it appear as if it glimpes out from somewhere down below there. Because if all of this was meant seriously, then that would really give you something to think about. Sweet shit.

They take up interesting issues along the line. For instance hyperinflating the current “jesus is your buddy”-campaign of the Catholic church. Would those thousands of young kids and teenagers that went to see the pope wave back at them, tell them to not have abortions or sex, sing along to “I talk to Jesus, I walk with Jesus, I rock with Jesus, I make love to Jesus. …But I never get bored with Jesus.”? Me, I especially like how they take their piss at church gospel at the end of the song. Because, no matter how grooving and how well sung those Sister Act type songs and shows are, they are still in praise of a god, that, if he exists, is cruel, heartless and violent. (Well, the same is true for Nick Cave, but then Nick Cave knows this, whereas those gospel choirs always sing about love and mean hate.) Aren’t we all nothing but sinners in the end? Shouldn’t we all bow down and repent? Ask for forgiveness? There is worse places to start than this one here.

Die aus Griechenland stammenden “Mary and the Boy” haben mit ihrem ersten offiziellen Album einen heftigen Brocken Musik auf den Markt gebracht. Die Band besteht aus Mary, The Boy und Exotic Dancer, welche in ihren Anfangstagen Musik für Danceshows und für das Theater machten. Auf dem Album erwartet uns eine nervenaufreibende Mischung aus Piano-Punk, Brutalpop, Industrial-Kabaret.

Die Musik zerrt an den Nerven. Die Lyrics ebenso. Das Album kommt einem Theaterstück gleich. Die einzelnen Akte heißen birth, death, mama, blackterror, prayer, jesus, fuckma, death. Konfrontiert wird man darin mit Geburtsschmerzen, zwischenmenschlichem Terror, Familienhölle, Selbstaufgabe, dem Aufreißen innerer Wunden, einiger anderer Abgründe und dem Abschied, welches hier dem Tod gleichgestellt wird. Im Mittelpunkt steht durchgängig Marys markante, theatralische Stimme – oft laut und punkig, dann lässig und verrucht wie eine Chansoneuse, gospelig oder kreischend. Klavier, Kirchenorgeln, elektronisch-experimentelle Klänge, noisige Gitarren begleiten sie und verstärken auf oft einschneidende Art das Szenario. Während Mary bei birth scheinbar selbst als Kind die Geburt durchlebt und sich die Kehle aus dem Hals schreit, geht es in blackterror wütend, tobend zu. Punk pur: “He took his knife and ripped my heart….Fucker mother. Fucker father”. Die Gitarren übernehmen dabei die akustischen Messerstiche. Klassisch, mit Orgelklängen verfeinert beginnt jesus. Sätze wie “I rock with jesus, I make love with jesus” werden im Verlauf ausgebaut bis das Ganze sich in einen saftigen Gospelgesang steigert. “Bloody hell.” lautet letztlich der Abschlusssatz dieses Theaterstücks.

Insgesamt ein absolut dunkel-avandgardistisches Werk. In einer leider nicht wieder aufgefundenen Quelle habe ich gelesen, dass beim intensiven Hören der Musik ähnliche Gefühle wachgerufen werden, welche man auch bei SM-Sessions durchlebt. Aha. Der diesbezüglich erfahrene Leser wird jetzt ungefähr wissen, was musikalisch auf ihn zukommt. Mich selbst hat es eher tief in das “Nachtasyl” von Maxim Gorki hinein geschleudert. In diesem Sinne: Hört rein und bildet euch selbst eine Meinung und entscheidet, ob ihr damit was anfangen könnt oder nicht. Einen Versuch ist es auf jeden Fall wert, zumal es sich um qualitativ hochwertige Ware handelt!

Anarchy doesn’t need screaming guitars or hectic beats. From a whisper to a scream, from melody to chaos…

This is the first official album from Mary and the Boy, released on Low Impedance Recordings, an album that needs patience and attention. Entirely recorded live this album is The soulful voice of Mary bewitches and cuts like a knife at the same time, terror and joy for your ears. The piano becomes a brutal machine gun and after a few seconds it plays sweet like a music box. Accompanied by filter and synth effects the atmosphere becomes more dense. Is this punk or is it pop? This music is a 21st century cabaret, facing a mirror to the audience…

The range of moods and sounds changing with the speed of light and capture the listener.

A great great great release on a special label. 100% approvable.

Retropop shards, unhealthy cyber blues, punk attitude or postmodern standing comedy, if you prefer: all this and much else (noise dissonances, extreme vocals and industrial culture) melt into controversial sequences, be they melodic, ambient or bitterly corrosive. Hallucinated musical, with explicit sexual and existential themes related to social disintegration, between abused synth lines and monologues. A strong interpretive performance believably amplified by this trio (Mary, Boy and Exotic) modulating traditional operations in a dramatically contemporary sense.

Low Impedance, le label à qui on doit déjà le récent est passionnant album Mathias Delplanque, propose aujourd’hui Mary And The Boy avec un album assez difficile d’accès, expérimental, conceptuel qui, le temps de neuf titres, évoque la vie de la naissance à la mort. Baroque rock, l’album rapelle certaines formations excentriques des années 80, mi-indus, mi-punk, qui faisant de leurs concerts des performances scéniques et de leurs albums des disques totalement underground. Ici la voix criarde, les hurlements de Mary se mélangent à la voix profonde et ténébreuse de The boys, le tout sur des riffs de guitares saturées et des notes de pianos épares. Une expérience.

had high expectations of the self-titled by Mary and the Boy. It was said to be “industrial-punk cabaret”. The liner notes had all sorts of strange pictures and even stranger texts. “So far, so good” were my thoughts. However, when I put the CD in the player, the only emotion I felt was disgust.

Mary’s voice is horribly out of tune. She half screams and half sings herself through the nine songs that are on the album. Out of tune vocals are not very annoying, as long as they add to the music. Unfortunately that is not the case. The only effect of them is that the hairs of the listener stand up straight.

The music itself isn’t bad. The Boy (he plays all the instruments) has created a couple of catchy songs, next to several quieter songs who are mostly to support Mary’s singing. It has to be said that the music and the vocals interact in a pretty interesting way. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to save it.

It’s a shame that Mary and the Boy fall for the old “good idea, but bad execution” principle. Especially Mary’s screeching starts to get on one’s nerves. The album is almost iconoclastic and gives a feeling that it’s mostly about being weird instead of being about the music. It leaves a bad taste.

The only salvation of the album is the music which has its moments. If The Boy ever releases a solo album, it could very well be a nice attempt.

From Greece, here I have the debut album of Mary and the boy. After I did some reading I found out that the band consists out of three official members. “Mary”, is the female vocalist. “The boy” being the musical backbone of the group, which means he is the one responsible for all the instruments and songs. A third person is called “The exotic”, but she seems to be the dancer of the group, for live performances. The letter submitted with the great looking digipack told me that Mary and the boy plays piano-punk, brutal-pop and industrial cabaret all mixed with a blender. I was in for a ride…

In little over 42 minutes this trio (or actually this duo) presents the listener 9 tracks. All recorded in a live recording situation, with lo-fi sound quality, which gives the record the industrial feeling. The first track (birth) opens with Mary singing, a little later joined by a piano and the boy. While this track uses the most of Mary’s voice I think it is the easiest of the whole album. I can’t deny that Mary sounds a lot like Diamanda Galas. Mary has a sound to her voice which is beautiful but revolting at the same time. The dramatic, melancholic sound in her voice works straight on your heart, some parts of this cd made me feel suppressed, stressful. I can understand that some people like that feeling, but for me it was a little too much.

Track two (Death) is the first to start promising but never delivering… just when you think the music will get a little stronger, or get that beat that is lurking just out of reach, M&tB take it away, as they will do on the rest of the album. The following track “Mama” has a beautiful organ/guitar part which sounds noisy thus great to my taste, and Mary’s hysterical vocals sing “Do you want to suck me on the/my cock”. I found this one of the best tracks of the cd, but I don’t know if the lyrics make it or break it. Rather strange is that the song “Mama” deals with cocks and the 4th song “Cock” starts with the word “Mama”. So I was wondering if there was a mistake, but even in the booklet it says that it’s correct. I’ll probably never know…

“Cock” is a duet between Mary and the Boy… The (distorted) piano is replaced by an organ and a wandering beat here and there. This track is almost as open and easy as the first. Next is “Black Terror”, just as ‘prayer’ a short track. both with a promising start but too soon over. Not really capable of sticking into one’s mind, because there seems to happen too much in too little time. I did really like the metal-sounding guitar riff which starts after a minute in “Black Terror”. I would like to see what would happen with that heavy guitar material if the track would last longer. Too bad, they could have made a really interesting song there.

Follower “jesus” makes up for the former two tracks. It is longer and demands a bit more of listening. I must say this is the musical highlight of the cd. “Fuck Me” reminds me of spirituals, gospels… the blues. That is, Mary’s singing does. Once again the music is thin. It throws you of guard with one single note from a bass. Once again the beat that does not come, which disappoints me and starts to get on my nerves. I feel like I’m hungry and someone is holding food in front of me, but I can’t reach it.

The last track “Death” (which bears the same name as the second track), consists out of two songs. I guess the second one can be seen as a hidden track. The tracks are more dark, there’s certainly a lot of reverb used with the making of “Death”. I must say, nice ending. All in all this album leaves me with a very double feeling. The first impression is different from what I made of it after a few times listening through the whole of it. I like it… at times. And it ought to be a demo, not a release at other moments. I think M&tB is much more interesting in a live situation, this is just not a record that I would play when I want to hear music. is If you are looking for songs, this is not for you. However, if you feel like a trip into the creepy mind of a new artist, and you feel like you can take a few psycho-twists, you might want to try the mind of Mary and the Boy. They are here to shock.

Ultra artsy electronic cabaret act, Mary and the Boy have released their first official album, which seemingly channels psychedelic acts from the ‘60s and puts a more electronic spin on them. Further enforcing this tie to psychedelic experimental music, Mary’s voice sounds very much like Jefferson Airplane era Grace Slick mixed with a touch of Janis Joplin to produce a voice that is frequently very hard on the ears but at the same time breathy and alluring. Intentionally out of tune, chaotically all over the scale, and frequently yelling, Mary’s voice is the centerpiece of this act, and your ability to accept her style will directly lead to you either enjoying or hating this album.

Accompanying the shrieking vocals of Mary is the minimalist programming of the Boy, which at times complements Mary perfectly, and others times is more of an incidental background noise to one of Mary’s vocal tangents. For as simple as the compositions tend to be, they are generally very well done and are a distinct highlight of the album, at times making you wish the vocals worked as well. Throughout the album, Mary and the Boy’s collaborative efforts work to varying degrees, at times being somewhat off-putting like on the tracks “Birth” and “Jesus,” but working quite well on the first track named “Death,” and the secret song attached to the second track named “Death.” The greatest shame, though, is the strongest and the only really awe-inspiring track of the album is also the shortest. If every song on the album was on the level of the track “Black Terror,” this would be the quintessential industrial cabaret album.

In the end, the album is very interesting but also very difficult to recommend. Mary and the Boy is not at all accessible and is very likely not going to be enjoyable for most listeners, but still there are things contained within that will occasionally send shivers up your spine. If you can get over the initial “knee jerk” reaction the album is sure to cause, you may find Mary and the Boy’s self-titled work to be a gem of an album… or you may find you’d prefer to shoot it out of a cannon over listening to it again.

The debut-cd of this Greek band sounds really bizarre! MATB composes a quite cabaret-like style of music inspired by gothic music. Guitar and electro structures are crossing each other while female screams and singing à la Nina Hagen now alternated and than joined by male vocals will lead you in a pure minimal trip. This is a kind of experimental cabaret, which would possible be more interesting on stage than on cd.

Mary And The Boy hanno la pretesa di volersi spingere oltre le consuete coordinate sonore, che all’interno di un sistema di riferimento tridimensionale identificano i generi e i gruppi dell’odierno panorama musicale. La domanda θ: ci riescono? A giudicare dall’omonimo disco di debutto si potrebbe dire che la formazione greca ha ancora parecchia strada da fare. Volutamente controversi ed espliciti (nei testi, ma anche nelle soluzioni strumentali e vocali) provano a essere rumorosi, seducenti, volgari, sacri, sintetici, nichilisti, mortiferi, schizofrenici, subdoli, mistici, drammatici, melodici e teatrali al tempo stesso. I brani sono stati registrati dal vivo al fine di mantenere inalterata la componente grezza e per donare piω spontaneitΰ al lavoro e cercando di consentire la massima interazione tra elettronica “old fashioned”, chitarre e, soprattutto, la voce di Mary (che prevale su quella di The Boy). Al di lΰ di un evidente sensazionalismo, diciamo che mettono in scena uno spettacolo di electro-dark-cabaret avanguardista e figlio di un orgasmo tra un synth di scorta dei Virgin Prunes, una drum machine rubata ai Sucide, una chitarra scassata del Pop Group e le corde vocali di Jarboe che si annodano a quelle di Diamanda Galas. Ovviamente con una sostanziosa scala al ribasso applicata a quanto appena detto.

Pop has lost much of its revolutionary potential. To Mary and the Boy, however, it is still a weapon. From bringing together Beethoven and raunchy RnB in their live shows to sexy promotional photoshoots somewhere in the middle between a joke and deadly serious professionalism, they know exactly how to play the game, while keeping things interesting for themselves as artists. Their eponymous debut album manages to expand upon this confronting stance by placing their philosophy in a sort of theatrical context and mating it with religious provocation.

There have been, this much is certain, tamer records this year. The title index already provides plenty of hints towards the direction this Greek ensemble is taking: “birth”, “death”, “mama” – fundamentals of life presented within a proliferatingly perverted context. One can vividly imagine the fun the band is having reading reviews by the most polite and gentle of journalists citing lyrics like “Your girlfriend died of Syphilis. Oh. What a pity”.

This radical surface is only half of the story, though. For the album only really takes off through its charmingly catchy melodies and heavenly hooks. It makes a remarkable difference, after all, listening to a sentence like “I’m a cock. Do you want to suck me?” when accompanied by a string of irresistible guitar chords or by atonal, academic piano clusters.

However, clever provocation and the effective use of memorability in places where one would least expect them is not all there is to this album. Surprises are around every corner and styles from all over the place get bunched together in a colourful musical bouquet which no longer carries the traditional connotations of its contributing flowers. Ecstatic industrial screams, piercing distortion molten into hymnal harmony, church organs rising triumphantly from whispered profanities, metal intermezzos with exploding bass drums and short excerpts from what could be endless soundscapes.

The interplay between almost emotionless, sonorous male voices and strident, extravagant, eccentric and theatrical female chant is the immediately recognisable element which holds things together. One can’t help but feel that each track is to be experienced as a short scene from a dilusional cut-up movie with the protagonists taking on various roles in the process.

Mary and the Boy want to be everything at the same time – whore and angel, sinner and saint. It is therefore only consequential, that their constant rants must end in a grand gesture of appology: “Jesus” will have believers crying and should see Andrew Lloyd Webber furious as to why he didn’t come up with this theme himself (if he were ever exposed to it). You never quite know of whether it’s a parody or whether they actually mean it.

In this case, this doesn’t mean May and the Boy have failed. Ambiguity has always been the strong point of pop and it is the essence of an album, which carries its double entendre like a precious mink.

This is some nefarious shit. And I say ‘shit’ with the utter most respect. It is certainly more damaged than the most awkward moments of PJ Harvey’s first fistful of recordings. And we could certainly link the vocals (in tone, level of disturbance and timbre) of Mary to those of the tiny Brit. Hell, as far as yours truly is concerned the world cannot have enough PJ Harveys. So that’s not an issue here. Besides, Mary and The Boy’s compositions more than stand on their own, either by pieces or with the full record as one. This is mighty fucked, and better yet when this Greek band opts for experimenting, which by the way is all the time, they do it smartly, with quick and quirky compositions that owe as much to the aforementioned artist as they do to a Diamanda Galas or a high rent Met performing opera singer. Yes, Mary doesn’t only bear children while being a virgin but also joyously desecrates her insides in this brilliant and deranged recording.

For a while I had been wondering what the music was going to be like. I had been eyeing this recording for a few weeks now; my instincts rightly instructed me that Mary and The Boy would fall on the furthest of left fields, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for this. This is difficult, because for the masses the music of Mary and The Boy simply lays itself out like music that has been deconstructed and that somehow has found its way into plastic. But those more adventurous listeners will dig this, especially if they like the morbid and the theatrics.

So yeah, some of these songs sound like fragments, but the way Mary and The Boy express themselves is so dramatic, yet somehow it never falls into exaggerated pretenses or cheeseball territory. Even when a Nick Cave-ish voice erupts in one of the songs to proclaim that ‘the devil thought he had the keys’ it all comes so nicely twisted. Some of the music is bare, quite stripped, where Mary barely aided by The Boy evokes baroque times via some church organ. And talk about blasphemy or to be frank, about having no boundaries. Mary and The Boy could put the foulest Satanic blasphemers to shame when half a capella/half speaking Mary proclaims to make love to Jesus. Then a quick Eddie Van Halen-like solo comes in. Nice.