ALPHAVILLE

Imperial Triumphant is a New York-based technical death metal band with strong avant-garde elements. This album made the top list of 2020 albums of YouTube music reviewer Anthony Fantano and therefor got my attention. The band has also released three very intense and though-provoking video clips I can highly recommend watching (start with 'City Swine'). Basically this is very odd and chaotic sounding death metal with some noticeable influences of King Crimson, though that's mainly on the opening track 'Rotted Futures'. The band is celebrated for its attempts to find a way to really do something new in the metal genre and I would agree. Especially the late night jazz influenced high- speed death metal track 'Transmission to Mercury' sounds very original. The very intense 'Atomic Age' offers some very interesting ideas on structure and how a song is supposed to work. Love the melancholy part in the middle. The title track 'Alphaville' opens with some vile shrieking guitar parts and riffage that reminds me a bit of Voivod. Like on many extreme metal productions the sound is so intense that the whole band sounds a bit blurred and obscured. The vinyl offers some great packaging with posters, lyric sheets and stunning artwork. Music like this is however extremely hard to read for lower to mid-level turntables. The band has a stage performance with black robes and golden masks (a bit like in Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut') and sounds very competent in performing this very technical type of avant- metal. This album of Imperial Triumphant offers a very complete work of art, combining music and imagery in very interesting ways. I love the way this band is progressing a crowded genre, though I hope their next productions will have some of that sonic transparency and tightness of - for instance - later era Death. A mandatory listen for fans of the technical progressive metal genres.