Imperial Triumphant - Alphaville
“Get back in line, of course you want more….. we don’t need you” are a segment of lyrics that open City Swine; that being the third track on New York trio Imperial Triumphant’s new album, Alphaville. If you like genre slices then take this for what you will: Imperial Triumphant are an experimental avant garde jazz extreme metal band, and Alphaville is as much musical architecture, as it is Portal and Cannibal Corpse, while channelling Ornette Coleman and Duke Ellington.
2018’s Vile Luxury from 2018 was considered their magnum opus, and it is a very good album. However, the songwriting, the dynamics, the craft and the atmosphere have improved to a level that was not predictable. Alphaville takes its name from the 1965 Godard film, and the film (while black and white) is a visual marker for the album as a whole. It is an experience much like Vile Luxury, but the six movements here are also memorable as chapters. There is always a section or a riff, a bass line, a sample or vocal that is its individual marker, and while Vile Luxury was a memorable album, Alphaville is a highlight reel of sonic gold.
Rotted Futures will lead you in with a minute and a half of gradual swirling and discombobulating samples and effects, before a bass driven trip enters and plunges you into the depths of the reality we find ourselves in - our future - our present - a city built in the past. Alphaville in theme is an extension of Vile Luxury, but not a repeat of it. The guitar textures on Rotted Futures (and elsewhere) add a lot of height to the often swirling and mesmerising structures, a Portal like vertigo. They are however memorable with strange atonal qualities, and backward melodies.
Alphaville is a dense experience with equal amounts of space and fury, while always trying to keep the powerful sound of the trio front and centre. And in this respect, it is the work of accomplished musicians. These are musicians that know how to take their skill, their experience, their influences and craft something that is organic and unique, dramatic and crushing, while wanting you to come back for more, time and time again.
A walking bass leads in Excelsior before deep frenetic drumming and a jarring (but catchy) guitar chord structure bends and twists the atmosphere out of control. The old school New York atmosphere is ever present, but none of it is ever tiring, because everything has its place, and a purpose. The intertwining compositional assault adjusts your senses somehow, and these are compositions that were on the most part played live as a trio. The climax on Excelsior drops back into a chilling sample, the sounds of the city, before an industrial stomp levels matters into a remarkable bass led frenzy.
City Swine is mostly slower pace, with a repeating guitar bar that tempts the listener into a doom of disgust. It's a jaunt that drags you deeper into the city of swine, the number one city: New York, before Tomas Haake on the Taiko Drum adds another dimension to an already classic mix on avant garde extremity - Alphaville is a guttural body of work without a God in sight.
Atomic Age opens with Barber Shop vocals, and a sampled Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero. It’s a sarcastic but chilling backdrop to a track that takes you back to a post WWII time, the horror of the Atomic Bomb, or a backdrop that takes you forward into the impending doom of 2020. For that matter, the album is produced very well, the band and production team have put a lot of work into Alphaville. Often a vision will become lost due to the need to throw so much into the pot, but with Trey Spruance and Gorguts guitarist Colin Marston on board to guide the trio (and a lot of others), the effort and craft has translated on record perfectly. You can spend the next year (and beyond) picking apart the structures, samples and effects used here - as much as they are all ear worms, Alphaville is also a visual piece of work. The grandiosity in its structure, its depth and its ability to warp your senses, move you up and down and from side to side is rare. The cover art by Zbigniew M. Bielak (Portal, Ghost) is the album art of 2020.
Alphaville is tension and release, it has a level of restraint, and a sense of impending doom, a ring of fire, or a sacrifice before the bomb is dropped. The vocal textures are at times terrifying, with the right pair of headphones, the climaxes can take you outside of your body. Fifth track, Transmission to Mercury ups the jazz even more-so, but it is also remarkably filled full of blasts and gripping vocals, and tension galore. The use of Trombone and piano is unparalleled to this quality in extreme metal.
Like the drama of Ornette Coleman, you want Imperial Triumphant to move you through their vision, their city, their swine, their number one city. Alphaville is a masterpiece, and the only downside to the album (much like when Vile Luxury was released) is that they have made their Magnum Opus, and what else can surely be left to build, because I want more.