When 2000 brought me Gorgoroth‘s Incipit Satan, I felt this is about as good as it’s going to get for the black metal scene, oh how very wrong I was. For Zyklon has led 2001 into a all out nuclear assault of aural execution. If you survive the vicious beating you’re ass will receive from this slab of plastic, you may be singing it’s praises much like myself (bruised bottom and all). Zyklon features Zamoth (Samoth) and Trym of Emperor, Destructhor of Myrkskog and leading up the vocals is Daemon of Limbonic Art. Now don’t get this confused with Zyklon-B, this is an entirely different band. This crew of thrashers serve up an album of killer black metal with a hint of death metal influence thrown in. A lot of the solos and riffs seem to be older Morbid Angel worship, and to be honest that isn’t a bad thing at all. They have a very stable line-up and are currently touring, which makes me quite the happy man considering I’ve heard some pretty good things about their live performance. Tracks that stuck out to me were "Hammer Revelation", "Chaos Deathcult", and the opus "Transcendental War". "Transcendental War" features Trickster G (Garm, whatever) lending some of his vocal stylings. Another interesting aspect is the fact that all the lyrics were composed by none other than Bard "Faust" Eithun, former member of Emperor and convicted murderer (still serving his 14 year sentence). He does a good job of writing very intelligent and insightful lyrics. Another helping hand is lent to this album by the sexy Persephone, the very lovely Fetish queen who does a few spoken parts on the album. Now that Emperor has become pretty much a studio project, it’s good to see that Zamoth has already begun to turn his efforts to something which I feel has a lot of potential. To be quite honest, I wasn’t impressed with the last Emperor album, I felt it moved in directions that the band’s fans were not very interested in. However, if you are looking for a more aggressive approach, here you are. Welcome my friends… Welcome to the World ov Worms.

Review byDestro