Experimental metal group Imperial Triumphant release a visualiser video for the track, ‘Metrovertigo’ which appears on their newest album Spirit Of Ecstasy, which we recently reviewed.
"Plutocratic myths exist in the shadows of the divine. Placed upon the middle sector as shackles of the unknown. A giant wave pool claims the livelihoods of many, while still many wilfully hand it to the Plutocratic gods as unrealised gains. Bow down and eat dirt. Welcome to a new era. Welcome home"; says Imperial Triumphant about ‘Metrovertiogo’.
Experimental metal group Imperial Triumphant release their new track and music video for ‘Tower of Glory, City of Shame.’ The music video was directed and edited by the band’s very own Steve Blanco.
“Monolithic events engineered throughout the ages compel great shifts in consciousness. Seemingly coincidental and synchronous points forever alter the landscape. Pigeons gather one by one. Civilization moves through the gateways and in hindsight the obscured vision becomes clearer. Still unknown, however is the truth as all is an illusion with much loss of life and zero accountability. At a certain point there are too many pigeons for the control’s infantile stories to be what they claim,” states Imperial Triumphant about ‘Tower of Glory, City of Shame’.
Watch the video here:
AA
Imperial Triumphant is gearing up to release their forthcoming full-length album, Spirit of Ecstasy, on July 22nd via Century Media Records. The band have already released two singles off the upcoming album, ‘Merkurius Gilded’ (ft. Kenny G and Max Gorelick) and ‘Maximalist Scream’ (feat. Snake/Voivod).
Spirit of Ecstasy follows the band’s previous LPs 2020’s Alphaville, 2018’s Vile Luxury and most recently their 2021 live record, An Evening With Imperial Triumphant, which was recorded at the infamous Slipper Room in New York City. Just like its predecessors, the album features a handful of special guests including Kenny G on soprano saxophone, Max Gorelick on lead guitar, Snake on vocals, Alex Skolnick on lead guitar, Trey Spruance on lead guitar, Andromeda Anarchia with choirs, Sarai Woods with choirs, Yoshiko Ohara on vocals, J. Walter Hawkes on the trombone, Ben Hankle on the trumpet, Percy Jones on bass, SEVEN)SUNS on strings, Colin Marston on Simmons drums and Youtube, and Jonas Rolef on vocals. Stay tuned for more details about the highly anticipated release by following the band on socials.
Imperial Triumphant is Zachary Ilya Ezrin (vocals, guitars), Steve Blanco (bass, vocals, keys, theremin) and Kenny Grohowski (drums).
Recently, Imperial Triumphant announced that they will be joining Zeal & Ardor for their North American tour 2022. The band will be hitting the road starting September 11th in Brooklyn and wrapping on October 7th in Berkeley. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit Imperial Triumphant’s website.
IMPERIAL TRUMPHANT Tour Dates:
U.S. Headline Shows
July 29 – Baltimore, MD – Ottobar
July 30 – Youngstown, OH – Into the Darkness Fest
July 31 – Rochester, NY – Montage Music Hall
European Headline Dates/Festivals
August 10 – Jaroměř, Czechia – Brutal Assault
August 12 – Oxfordshire, England – SUPERNORMAL FEST
August 13 – Manchester, England – The White Hotel
August 14 – Glasgow, Scotland – Stereo
August 15 – Belfast, England – Voodoo
August 16 – Dublin, Ireland – The Grand Social
August 18 – Somerset, England – ArcTanGent Festival
August 19 – London, England – The Dome
August 20 – Méan, Belgium – MÉTAL MÉAN
August 21 – Brittany, France – MOTOCULTER
August 23 – Madrid, Spain – Moby Dick
August 24 – Barcelona, Spain – Sala Upload
August 25 – Toulon, France – L’Hélice
August 26 – Mantova, Italy – The Academy
August 27 – Winterthur, Switzerland – Gaswerk
August 28 – Strasbourg, France – La Maison Bleue
August 29 – Nijmegen, Netherlands – Merleyn
August 30 – Hamburg, Germany – Hafenklang
August 31 – Aalborg, Denmark – 1000 Fryd
September 1 – Oslo, Norway – Bla
September 2 – Goteborg, Sweden – Fangelset
September 3 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Hotel Cecil
September 8 – Leipzig, Germany – Bandhaus
September 9 – Tel Aviv, Israel – Gagarin
Zeal & Ardor North American Tour
September 11 – Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw
September 12 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
Eight Bells have revealed the dark melancholic video single ‘The Well’ taken from their forthcoming new album Legacy of Ruin, which is scheduled for release on February 25, 2022.
The avant-garde doom project from Portland, Oregon conceived by guitarist and singer Melynda Jackson has previously revealed cover art, tracklist, and further details of their new full-length. Watch the video here:
AA
“This song’s story is particularly personal for me”, explains singer and guitarist Melynda Jackson. “It explores the emotions and fears of pastoral ‘salt of the earth types’ looking over the land that no longer yields a good harvest as a metaphor describing their lives. Mourning the bountiful past and coming to realize that they themselves are responsible for a bleak future. Melynda Amann, who was a member during the writing of this track, is also singing with us, while Andrea Morgan adds haunting ambience with his violin.”
With their third album, the Portland metal experimentalists have sharpened their songwriting approach to create a soundtrack for the end of the world. Legacy of Ruin again features the trio’s trademark haunting vocal harmonies along with sometimes blistering, and sometimes impressionistic guitar riffing to create heady atmospheres of dark and light.
The result of Eight Bells’ musical exploration is an emotional and insistent odyssey that transcends genre and imbues contemporary metal with 19th-century Victorian ghostliness, cinematic soundscapes in combination with female and male vocal harmonies perfectly fitting the album’s lyrical story. "Legacy of Ruin" focuses on themes of the human condition, natural destruction, death, regret, loss, malice, and retribution.
Maybe I’m not nearly as musically ware as I thought. Or maybe some bands are simply so way off radar, it takes a poke from a PR to get things moving. And so it is that my introduction to Circle comes after they’ve already got over 30 albums to their credit. Before I even start listening, I find myself thinking ‘shit, I hope it’s not so awesome that I feel compelled to explore their entire back catalogue’. I’m still working on The Melvins after all, and have kinda parted ways with The Fall in recent years, not because I haven’t enjoyed any of their more recent release, but because I simply can’t keep up, and there’s so much music out there. Something’s got to give.
Terminal contains six tracks, all bar one of which extend beyond the five-minute mark, and opening with the thirteen-minute ‘Rakkautta Al Dente’. It’s got the lot woven into its epic, dense fabric, building on a mystical desert rock vibe that spins out for mile after mile, before a ravaged vocal, by turns demonic and magickal, leads through a preposterously theatrical rock opera of sorts, riding through a succession of crescendos and surges, with changes of style galore, ranging from medieval riffery to cinematic prog. And… well. It’s effectively an entire album in a single song. Over the top? Way over… but if you’re going to go over, there’s no point in just scraping the bar.
The title tracks kicks in with a punchy riff that leans heavily on ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ by The Stooges – or, from another perspective, that classic chord sequence that informs a near infinite number of songs – before flying off into motoric space rock territory. With ‘Saxo’ mining a manic post-punk seam and ‘Kill City’ coming on somewhere between Iron Maiden and GWAR before ‘Sick Child’ plays out with a thumping psychedelic trudge, Terminal is as eclectic as a heavy, guitar-based album is as likely to come.
Small wonder the Finnish act are almost unanimously hailed as the very definition of genre-defying. At its heart, you may say there’s a hard rock / heavy metal album lurking amidst the coalition of disparate elements which form Terminal. This would certainly sit with the narrative of an album released on Southern Lord. But the way in which everything is drawn together – sometimes seamlessly, sometimes audaciously and unexpectedly – means that this framing of the album doesn’t really work. All of this leaves more questions than answers in terms of how to frame, and therefore how to accommodate Terminal. But regardless of how one assimilates, or otherwise fails to assimilate it, Terminal is a wild ride, and while in places perplexing and vastly excessive, it’s never for a moment dull or predictable.
Aural Aggravation 