This is Imperial Triumphant’s fifth album and I confess that till now I didn’t know any of them. Looking at their cv, I was surprised as a varied approach to metal with a later tendency to an avant-garde technical black and metal style suggests that this 17 year old band from New York has something very interesting to offer. But the world is a big place and so we don’t get to hear about all the bands we’d like to hear about. So, I was grateful to hear about this one, my experience of whom I will now share.
Sound adjustment needed …. drunken, distorted guitar strains emit forth. A very sinister cacophony of sounds are supported by deathly growls. The drums beat, the air is filled with piercing sounds like distorted sirens. Avant-garde indeed. It’s “Chump Change”. And change happens with a switch to gloomy isolation before the switch gets turned and to a jazz-type background, the guitar wails and howls and sends us into another unfathomable off beat soundscape. No idea where we were going with that one. That was fun. “Metrovertigo” sends us off down another insane path. There’s an element of Ephel Duath about this, but this is more industrial in its metal form. It moves into a thunderous scene but with nightmarish choral elements and tuneless tonality. For a moment we wander through a spooky dark cavern. It’s like a cross between ferocious disharmony and a warped record. Sounds come in and out in abundance but clarity is not Imperial Triumphant’s world. The start of “Tower of Glory, City of Shame” is as spaced out, weird and distorted as I had now come to expect. The “riff” is like a throbbing headache as swathes of horror cascade down, accompanied by a demented chant. Out of somewhere comes majestic melancholy, hard to imagine in all this other worldliness but don’t worry, the horror continues with a piercing scream and a deeply dark atmospheric fog of a sound. The piece ends in chaos as we hear sounds that suggest collapse and disorder and urban decay.
“Merkurius Gilded” starts like a dramatic film score. It moves into a dramatic symphonic black metal mood except symphony is nearer to cacophony. What follows is the sound of hardship as presented in experimental form and at one pointed accompanied by a chorus from Star Trek. More harsh industrial nightmares are presented as “Death on a Highway”. A trumpet adds woozy melancholy to the chaos on “In the Pleasure of their Company”, a jazzy melting pot of obscure and diverse musical messages without apparent form. The instrumental blend is interesting but it seems about ghastliness until a jazz guitar cuts in and with the technicolour drumming bring a rare warm soul to the piece. The guitar takes us into dreamland. It’s bizarre, it’s weird, but for once we’re taken through an ostensibly sunny soundscape. “Bezumnaya” is the most mystical piece. As ever it peers through the mist and obscurity. A spoken voice which may be Russian cuts through the increasingly desperate and frantic mist. “Bezumnaya” means “crazy”. That fits. The atmosphere is black. Heavy weights are upon us. Orchestral winds swirl. Manic gut-wrenching screams are followed by weighty, chunky guitar work. Thus starts the final industrial soundscape, “Maximalist Scream”. The customary off beat rhythm matches the distorted black gloom and menace. Enhanced by wandering keyboards and roaring growls, the picture painted is one of an urban environment which is violent and out of control.
Imperial Triumphant are not a band to be taken lightly. It’s all mystifying. It’s all intriguing. It’s alarmingly atmospheric. I connected to some parts of it but not so much others, which left me staring into bemused space. It’s a nightmare but an interesting one.
(7/10 Andrew Doherty)
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