CD review IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT ‘Alphaville’

With their new album ‘Alphaville’, Imperial Triumphant certainly don’t make things easy for Metal fans. Their fourth album, the first for Century Media, contains nine songs that are hard to outperform in complexity. Brilliant musicianship and madness are very closely related on this album. Tech-, Math- and Avantgarde Metal is what the New York City-based band melts to a musical challenge that’s far beyond a simple riff for headbanging.

For almost an hour the band lures friends of hard sounds into surreal musical worlds. You will look in vain for catchiness and a common thread. Each of the nine tracks is a sequence of sound elements and it’s the few moments, like the jazzy piano interlude on ‘Transmission to Mercury’, that give your mind and ears a break. After such a mental pause for the listener, Imperial Triumphant continuous with challenging everybody with ludicrous cascades of sound, whereby the jazzy character is preserved in the form of the saxophone.

If the Voivod cover ‘Experiment’ with its deep growls can be considered as a catchy tune, it describes the character of the other tracks quite well.
Imperial Triumphant certainly leave nothing to coincidence. There are sound enthusiasts at work who are highly committed to their musical vision with no compromises. ‘Alphaville’ with its ecstasy is certainly interesting for a smaller group of metalheads. The majority, however, will listen with open eyes and dropping jaws to the sound this album brings to the fore. Are you willing to take the challenge?