Zakula - S/T Review

I’ve said this a zillion times here and I can’t stop repeating it every time I find a band as Zakula with their “Zakula” album. Extreme Metal is the avant-garde in Metal music. I have no doubt about it. Zakula are a great example of how to combine extreme technical musicanship with an aggressive and full of wrath and fury music. “Zakula” is technically bold experimenting lots of out-of-Metal techniques and sonancies without loosing the needed and required heavyness and extreme hard beating. Also the band shows that speed that doesn’t have nothing to do with the heavyness of the music as many tracks in here aren’t fast and even though they are extremely heavy.

From track one named simply as “Fractals” the fan will notice that Zakula have that something different that makes it stand out of the crowd. From where I’m standing, the band and the song conquered me with the enchanting chorus in the middle of the song. Really something very special. “Hollow” has some modern Metal touch and inspiration and this is used for the better. The song is heavy as hell and vocals are the more desperate and hopeless as they get. By the way, vocalist Paschalis Christofilos really knows how to pass the kind of despair that takes the song. The frentic and mesmerizing guitar riffing colors the song and give the fan an impression that the end of the world is near. Well, to me, all Metal bands should give this impression. Following track “Atmosfear” has totally a SOAD feeling. With no fear of embarrassing themselves, Zakula deliver the fan “Vanity” a very short and full of funky elements track which only defect is to be very short.

“Zakula” goes very smoothly and linearly in its vey own way of not being smooth and linear. It’s the kind of album to the fans of something more bold, an album that really proves that Extreme Metal is the avant-garde of Metal music with all the experiments and weird non-conventional music – isn’t it redundant? The feeling I get is that in each track of this self-tittled album the band reunites and discusses the possibilities of being even bolder and less conventional. The outcome is here for the fan’s delight. Or not. It depends on the fan. I like it very much.

Zakula S/T was released in this 2021 AD.

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