Zemial-Nykta thumb

STREAM: Zemial - "Pharos"

Greece’s Zemial’s come a long way since their 1992 stripped-down and fuzzy black metal stomper Sleeping Under Tartarus, but even back then they had some experimental and progressive tendencies. On that album, interesting rhythmic switch-ups and a playful sense of melody stand side-by-side with typical-of-the-times blastbeats and trebled-out guitars. Twenty-some years on, Zemial’s a black/thrash/you name it jack-of-all-trades, expert at crafting the sort of epics that are as operatic in scope as they are wonky. It totally works, too.

Here’s “Pharos” off of Zemial’s forthcoming album, Nykta, the band’s latest since 2005’s In Monumentum. It’s huge, and not just in length–clocking it at fourteen minutes, this goes from death metal ripper to dungeon master monologue to prog jam-out to cinematic soundscape. Killer bass. Sit back and listen.

Nykta is out October 31 on Hell’s Headbangers.

Wyatt Marshall