Glory be, we are truly in the Roaring 20’s again! And I’m not just talking about the year: it’s the culture. A wealthy elite holds the cards, engorging their bank accounts on the backs of industry. They revel in decadence and the spoils of their financial victory. Meanwhile, those below the glittering upper crust are subject to rot, decay, and deprivation. The masks are cracking and slipping, and the dull hum of an approaching cataclysm is rapidly intensifying like a tornado bearing down on us. And therefore, I ask; what better band to score this new age of gilded rot than New York’s Imperial Triumphant?
To expose biases right away, Imperial Triumphant has been one of my favorite contemporary metal bands since I first checked out Vile Luxury in 2019. Their muscular dissonant, avant-garde black/death metal borne by a skeleton of loose noir jazz felt (and still feels) absolutely fresh and exhilarating, and the following Alphaville and Spirit of Ecstasy took that sound to even more outlandish heights. It’s almost shocking to me how big they’ve gotten, but their striking art deco aesthetics, phenomenal live presence, and commitment to maintaining their metropolitan yet deranged spirit had to win over some followers, right? So of course, I jumped at the chance to check out Goldstar when it quietly popped up on our review list a few months ago.
Multiple listens in, I am once again struck, but this time by a different feeling that the band themselves highlighted in some recent press; the feeling that, somehow, Goldstar stands as Imperial Triumphant‘s sound rendered accessible and approachable. Now make no mistake, Goldstar is still a very weird album by conventional standards. The riffs are bendy and dissonant, song structures are loose and subject to unexpected shifts, and the band still commits to many moments of free jazz exploration. It’s still avant-garde extreme metal rooted in jazz, you know?
But once the opening fanfare of “Eye of Mars” subsides and a riff that could have come from Emperor‘s Prometheus kicks in, it becomes quickly apparent that Goldstar isn’t quite another expansion in weirder directions for the band. “Gomorrah Nouveaux”, despite its latent dissonance, features a groove that feels almost thrashy before blossoming into resplendent tremolo lead halfway through. The pacing and atmosphere of “Lexington Delirium” is almost queasily languid by Imperial Triumphant standards, while “Hotel Sphinx” bares a repeating boldly classical trilling motif between its blistering riffs before heading into a crunchier breakdown. The riff craft is still weird, bendy, and textural, but there are more hooks in the first half of the album than there are on entire previous albums.
The back half of the album, admittedly, does feel a bit more alien by comparison. One of the album’s highlights, “Pleasuredome”, features some grooving but purposely awkwardly timed riffing. Which checks out when it features the second guest appearance (after “Lexington Delirium”) on the album for the now-recurring Tomas Haake of Meshuggah fame, as well as Slayer‘s Dave Lombardo just in case the song wasn’t already cause for nocturnal emissions among percussion stans. The section of every drummer going ham while Steve Blanco’s bass slinks over top is just jazz ecstasy. “Industry of Misery” is a phenomenal closer that sludges along with molten riffs, featuring a tense, dread-inducing buildup in the back half that could score a Fritz Lang film while also featuring a shockingly bluesy, emotive guitar solo from main man Zachary Ezrin. The moment where all the music cuts to Ezrin growling ‘Bring down the guillotine!‘ is already one of my favorite single vocal moments in the band’s whole repertoire.
Add to that the Gorgutsian death metal pummeling of “Rot Moderne”, the borderline grindcore of “NEWYORKCITY” (featuring another Imperial Triumphant regular guest in the harrowing shrieks of Yoshiko Ohara), and the scratchy old pseudo-cigarette ad that is “Goldstar”, and Imperial Triumphant has once again crafted one hell of an album. And as one should always expect from the band, the instrumental work is just phenomenal. Zachary Ezrin’s guitar work is absolutely wild, and his cavernous growl is still deeply commanding. Meanwhile, the rhythm section is as outstanding as ever. Steve Blanco’s nimble bass work, making full use of wah pedal, effects, and tasteful slaps, threatens to steal the spotlight from the guitars regularly, while Kenny Grohowski’s jazzy drumming is just phenomenal in every circumstance. I’d call both of them some of my favorite musicians for their respective instruments, and I’d imagine I’m far from alone in that.
Helmed by yet another great cover by Zbigniew Bielak, produced and mixed to perfection by Colin Martson and Arthur Rizk respectively, and lyrically driven by the state of the modern world, every element of Goldstar is honed to a shine. Between that, the upped conventionally metal approach on display, and the album’s shockingly tight sub-40 minute runtime, and it would not be surprising at all if Goldstar ends up a gateway album for a lot of listeners who bounced off the towering weirdness of previous releases. It seems odd to postulate that any Imperial Triumphant album can be “approachable”, and by common standards Goldstar still isn’t, but it’s definitely as close to welcoming as I could imagine this band being without them undergoing some deeper change in spirit.
Goldstar, after a number of listens, has been a genuine treat for me, and I’m eager to see what response this album gets from the greater metal public. Imperial Triumphant‘s sound has always split the difference between polished grandeur and creeping urban decay that plagued the Roaring 20’s and plagues us even more bloodily today. Hearing that sound distilled so expertly into a tight, easily digestible album is nothing short of a wonder. It’s fitting cause to break out the finest wine, wear your best suit, and wait for the skyscraper to crumble out from beneath your rooftop bar. Cheers to Imperial Triumphant, and may their monuments stand tall through the storms ahead.
Excellent review. Very excited to check this out and while I was on the fence about seeing them at Reverb this Sunday, because of…well…Reverb, this may have changed my mind.