'Non Serviam' may have been a worthy follow-up to 'Thy Mighty Contract', but it lacked a certain panache that left one feeling gently hollowed out after each listen. The ideas were there, but the spirit remained unwilling. Taws ever thus for Greek black metal in general. Combining ancient mysticism with delicate melodies and arcane imagery proved to be such a finely honed and brittle approach to extreme metal that many could not sustain the aesthetic for more than a couple of albums. That's not to say the divergent paths many of the artists took were terrible. Zemial successfully absorbed prog metal into playful Celtic Frost style energy with 2009's 'Nykta'. Vorskaath's brother "Eskarth the Dark One" (Chris to his mates) took his project Agatus into a dignified heavy metal direction. Varathron's return to form with 'Untrodden Corridors of Hades' was triumphant, but in updating the Hellenic style with a modernised sheen it normalised a certain bombastic, melodramatic variant of melodic extreme metal that jettisoned the subtle esotericism present in those early works.