ZYKLON „Aeon”

Music: Death/Black Metal
Duration: 40:00 minutes (9 songs)


Good songs: every song has its moments, you don't want to listen to any particular songs, but to the entire album instead, this is caused by the record's more atmospheric structure

Zyklon is a band that consists out of two former Emperor members, one Myrkskog member, and a vocalist from Limbonic Art, named Daemon. They recorded their debut “World Ov Worms”: A great album that many will remember from the positive reviews in magazines. On this second album, Daemon was replaced by vocalist Secthdamon, also from Myrkskog.

The band's style hangs somewhere between death and black metal, a little on the death side. The album has a very modern touch to it, not only due to some keyboard tunes, but also because of the clear and fresh sound. Zyklon managed to combine the brutality and into-your-face-ness of the sort of Vader-alike death metal with a sniff of nice black atmospheres. This effect is often affirmed by the keyboards.

The riffs are mostly simple but very effective, and imply a nice form of catchiness. Solo's are great too, mostly of the Slayer kind, although they are not really brutal (with exceptions), and function more to strengthen the black side of the music than the death side. The mix of genres is very balanced and blended, resulting in an album that has its atmospheric moments, but doesn't therefore suffer from boringness, and manages to stay interesting until the very end of the last notes of it.

What also jumps out during the listening of the record is that the music is of a very calculated kind. It all sounds pretty simple, but some of the remaining black metal complexity can be traced without too much effort, along with the blazingness in some blastbeats.

Compared to their previous effort, this record is again very Zyklon, and the band doesn't drift away from its style. This album might be slightly better than their debute “World Ov Worms”, not only is the music more evolved, experienced and mature on this record, the replacement in vocalist has a positive effect too. Secthdamon's voice seems more capable of variety and doesn't always stay on the same level.

All together this really is a great album that just goes a little further than another “World Ov Worms”, and that makes you bang your head!

note: 8.5/10

Tracklist

01 Psyklon Aeon
02 Core Solution
03 Subtle Manipulation
04 Two Thousand Years
05 No Names Above The Names
06 The Prophetic Method
07 Specimen Eruption
08 Electric Current
09 An Eclectic Manner