Band:	Zemial
Album:	Nykta
Style:	Black metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	October 31, 2013
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. Ancient Arcane Scrolls
02. Eclipse
03. Under Scythian Command
04. In The Arms Of Hades
05. Breath Of Pestilence
06. Deathspell
07. The Small
08. Pharos
09. Out Of The Cage

"The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis" - Dalai Lama. If the above quote was to be the standard of grading for musicians, it would appear that Greece's Archon Vorksaath is certainly passing the mark. Nykta, the third full effort from his Zemial project, is the type of album that evens out its various facets of personality excellently, and serves as only further testament to the amazing potential that can lie within one man bands.

Zemial was pretty much always blackened thrash at its core, but Nykta sees the project dabbling into more progressive territory than arguably ever before. There are still some aggressive cuts of course, that conjure thoughts of classic bands like Venom and Possessed ("Under Scythian Command," "Breath Of Pestilence," "Deathspell"), guaranteed to get some heads banging and delight fans of more classic forms of extreme metal.

But Vorksaath also takes to his latest work of art with a stimulating level of detail and atmosphere that hints at things far bigger and better than your average retro tribute to the 80s. Tracks like "Ancient Arcane Scrolls," "Eclipse," and the beautiful instrumental "The Small" have a much more relaxed and hypnotic feel, with a fantastic delivery of guitar leads and keyboard effects that come across as nothing short of dreamlike. "Pharos," perhaps the defining track of the album, is a 14 ½ minute voyage through an almost spacey instrumentation, with a near flawless level of layering that hints at many great things to come for Zemial in the future.

The key word with Nykta then, is balance. Aggressive, technical, in your face, and relaxing, there are truly few bases that Archon Vorksaath fails to cover this time around. With astoundingly varied production that brings every instrument out on the more progressive tracks, yet also buries the ones that need to be for the more orthodox ones, Nykta is a true artistic release, and quite possibly the project's best yet.

Stream it in full over here.