Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar
Century Media
Release Date: 21/03/2025
Review by Rory Bentley
10/10
Few bands in Extreme Metal make their fans jump through as many listening hoops as Imperial Triumphant. They already play a unique brand of Avant-Jazz-Death-Black Metal, which by its very definition should come with expectations of a challenging listen, but even if you’re on board with this approach, the obtuse compositional decisions, and mind-melting insanity that they gleefully imbue their albums with feels like they’re daring you to go on the insane journey with them and seeing how long you’ll last, laughing cantankerously as you tap out with bits of brain dribbling from your ears.
2022’s “Spirit of Ecstasy” took this confrontational sonic approach to a new zenith, making 2020’s cacophonous masterpiece “Alphaville” sound like the new Architects album by comparison, except you know…good. I was slated to review that record at the time, but I was not in the headspace to grapple with something that was the audio equivalent of being hazed by a fraternity of jazz nerds smacking you about with saxophones. I’ve since gone back to it and found much to enjoy, but it was no easy road to travel.
When I got sent “Goldstar” I went straight to the press notes, hoping that they would provide context and something to grab onto, anticipating another trip into a spinning vortex of existential urban dread and chords that only an octopus should be able to play. When I saw that the band were claiming they’d made a conscious effort to write something accessible I had to laugh. Three Avant Garde Jazz musicians playing Extreme Metal driven by a surrealist horror interpretation of New York while wearing black robes and ornate golden masks does not scream accessible it has to be said… But let me tell you- they weren’t lying!
Goldstar is by far the most palatable work the band has ever produced, with shorter songs, a cohesive flow, and a tight 38-minute runtime. Best of all though, it does not feel like an artistic compromise in any form – the band are still fucking nuts! From free-Jazz to Prog to Neoclassical to Grindcore and beyond, this record runs the gamut of genres with the same reckless abandon as the ‘Triumphant faithful have come to expect, but by tightening up the songwriting and focusing on brevity each nightmarish freakout is even more potent when it hits.
Opener ‘Eyes of Mars’ is a prime example of this new streamlined approach. The rubbery bass work, stabbing horn punctuations, and surprisingly catchy staccato riffs have all the hallmarks of the gold-masked-ones, but they stay in one place just long enough to catch a groove. It’s not exactly “Magma”-era Gojira, but it has a lot of replay value even when the melting guitars of the bridge hit like Inter Armas’s ‘New Heaven’ and things feel like they’re about to fall apart. It does a great deal in 5 minutes and much of it will stick with you even after one listen. Speaking of sticking with you, the stuttering handclaps and percussion on ‘Gomorrah Nouveaux’ are downright infectious, bringing to life a Gatsby-era underground club where cocktails flow and depravity runs wild. The guitars still sound demented and Zachary Ezrin’s chilling growls still sound like a Lovecraftian interdimensional being that’s acquired a taste for martinis, but it’s a party you’d love to be invited to.
‘Hotel Sphinx’ is a particularly intriguing composition, combining the Metallic with the Neoclassical to cinematic effect. Building a motif around a Death-Metalled up version of Handel’s “Sarabande in D Minor” it offers up a disorienting postmodern melding of high and lowbrow art, capturing the existential dread one feels in an overpopulated, chaotic metropolis where there is always an undercurrent of violence either physically or spiritually. This boiling tension is then perfectly unleashed on the utterly demented 47 seconds of bedlam on ‘NEWYORKCITY’, where the band employs regular collaborator and ‘Bloody Panda’ frontwoman Yoshiko Ohara to blast through an improvised Grindcore piece intended to capture the overwhelming feeling of panic brought on by the bustle of the band’s home city. Anyone who’s ever had a meltdown on the tube at rush hour will relate to this.
The title track sees the band replicating a 1950s cigarette advertisement, with ‘Goldstar’ being the brand of smokes that acts as the album’s visual centrepiece. Complete with an eery jingle sung in unsettlingly bright falsetto by a male voice group and capped off with a confident, MAD-Men-style copy read in a deep, masculine baritone. From the clanging piano keys to the gramophone crackles, it is a beautifully done pastiche, and when coupled with the record’s exquisite artwork-designed to look like a mid-century cigarette packet, it is an example of the kind of world-building that makes the band so unique. It also offers a brief chance to catch one’s breath before the second half of the album resumes its sensory attack.
‘Rot Moderne’ though once again sounding like the guitars are being kicked down the stairwell of a skyscraper, is pretty mosh-friendly and has a twisted groove that burrows its way into the noggin as it explores a grotesque character who embodies sickening excess, opulence, and spiritual bankruptcy in the pursuit of greed, capping off with the line “Leisure is pain, Light another cigarette. Just another unhealthy Everyday creature.”. If Trump Tower had a theme this would be it. Either that or the chilling ‘Pleasuredome’ where apocalyptic church bells chime beneath police sirens in a jarring Meshuggah-inflected hellscape where the band enlists Dave Lomardo on extra percussion duties and fellow drumming God and Meshuggah lynchpin Tomas Haake to provide his gravelly spoken word narration. It’s a heck of a flex to enlist two of Metal’s greatest ever stickmen and put them in supporting roles, with one of them not even sitting behind the kit, but clearly game recognises game.
Only closing opus ‘Industry of Misery’ approaches the punishing, Prog runtimes of yore, breaching the seven-minute mark, however even this makes enough concessions to pull the listener in for its duration. The odd chords and improvised piano that eases one into the explosive riffs and the blood-curdling roar of “Bring down the guillotine!” is as satisfying a build and release as you’ll get this year- these guys are giving us mosh calls now! The way things segue into Doom-like waltzing arpeggios before making way for a Frank Zappa-style fusion solo and building back into a blastbeat, tremolo outro with basswork that sounds like the Seinfeld theme being played by a wraith is a truly majestic cap off to an album that already feels like a classic to me.
Despite a conscious effort to ease off the more repellent aspects of their sound, Imperial Triumphant has still produced a work that may be the most fully realized example of their artistic vision yet. The band is still churning out nightmarish audio insanity in the inner sanctum of New York’s seedy underbelly, but this time the velvet rope has been lifted at the entrance to this exclusive club, and everyone is welcome to join the debauchery.
‘Gomorrah Nouveaux’ Official Video
TRACKLISTING:
01. Eye of Mars
02. Gommorah Nouveaux
03. Lexington Delirium
04. Hotel Sphinx
05. NEWYORKCITY
06. Goldstar
07. Rot Moderne
08. Pleasuredome
09. Industry of Misery
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Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Rory Bentley and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
