nonchalant and abrasive. the music often appears as grand, epic.. triumphant. especially with the piano, added to the background for chilling effect; the drumming goes off , it can be so fast, and so acoustic sounding. so on beat that it’s off beat. Slurred, dragging, and rushing..the bass is impressive, especially on the title track “alphaville”.

you won’t get what you want.

As you may but most likely didn't realize is that I've been busy for the last couple of days and haven't actually posted anything mainly to due to organizing a few things, some birthdays, work etc. But throughout my absent I have been listening to the most recent hyped album from the music scene. Alphaville, the album not the band, by avant-garde black metal band Imperial Triumphant whom gained a lot of attention with their 2018 release Vile Luxury which i should review and rate but ya know ... read more

Visceral chaos is what Imperial Triumphant do and that's just what we got in this album. "Alphaville" matches all expectations of an apocalyptic avant-garde shitshow, with a genrebending edge delivering a uniquely devastating, eardrum busting & psychedelic listening experience.

P.S.
(The whole album is great, but "Atomic Age" might just be the most terrifying song I've heard all 2020. It's like listening to a schizophrenic panic attack, I truly got chills at several ... read more

I can't really confidently distinguish good metal from bad metal - but the experimentation on this is really engaging and that's good enough for me.

Even if this is pretty choppy, I still enjoyed this a lot. Like I find that the off-beat nature to me is a little bit unnecessary and hurts my overall enjoyment of this album. For some people, that honest bothers them, but for me, it gets kind of annoying./

For me this actually got better the more I listened to it, the further down the track-list the more diverse and just musically more interesting songs started to appear.

I do love and appreciate the added jazz influences this and nods to ... read more

Whoa. That's really all I need to say, but I will say more.

The suspense and tension this album really builds over its incredibly chaotic nine-track lineup is almost akin to watching a good 40's noir film where the characters engage in a cat-and-mouse game. Rather than just leave it at that, however, Alphaville and Imperial Triumphant build up the world behind this game, showing the seedy surroundings and shady tormented background characters that show the world of the city in the dark behind ... read more

The roaring 20's are back with a vengeance!

This album is chaotic and dismal, and I would expect nothing less from the experimental, jazzy geniuses behind Imperial Triumphant. This LP throws you in a taxi driven by a rhinoceros and drives you through a hellish dystopia. And it's pretty rad.

The one qualm I have about Alphaville is that there are a few moments in the first few tracks that feel a little bit monotone. As if there's a lack of the tension and release that Imperial Triumphant are ... read more

Oh, my freaking shit! Okay, back to normality, or so I thought. So on Saturday night I took 3.5g of Shrooms for the first time, and boy, it was the most best and worst, most mind-boggling, unreal, unbelievable experience of my life. The walls were crawling, spinning, my Joker poster was grinning and changing colours, my weed flag was glowing and every time I put out a cig, I looked back and it was immediately big again. And this didn’t help; 1) this was my first time taking them, and I ... read more

imperial triumphant has astounded me once again.

objectively, this is their magnum opus and the best metal album that I've heard this year thus far. the production is much clearer and more detailed compared to 2018's "vile luxury," and I think the clearer production benefits this album and its artistic direction. it's a much more immediate, in-your-face, and relentless album that focuses on mind-bending song structures and endless riffs. "vile luxury" was more focused on ... read more

Imperial Triumphant has a fantastic visual style of art deco along with what comes with the intense look black metal brings with it. This style feels all their own and something they've really done well in claiming for themselves. With nearly an hour's worth of content, you're greeted with a variant of powerful, charging shots of instrumentation. The tracks on here are a little more straight forward compared to their last release, but this isn't entirely a detriment as most songs are still ... read more

Aplhaville is a black metal/ death metal/ jazz odyssey that will be one of the weirdest releases in metal you'll hear all year. This album brings you to the retro futuristic world that Imperial Triumphant have a love for, with the tremelo picked guitars and blast beats of blackened death metal, to the roaring 20's jazz sections to some tribal drumming, to even totally unexpected barbershop quartet passages. This future is described in the lyircs is very dark, where capitalism goes wrong and ... read more

yes yes the AOTY to my ears, well produced, palatable, good switching between cacophony of black metal and the experimental side of jazz, not sounding cringe or pretentious and the dark vintage aesthetic of both sound and looks, it's simply almost perfect for me

This album is one of the most creative black metal albums in a long ass while, this albums brutal beat down nature is so alluring and I’ll be returning to this for a long time even after this year

Awful.

great album, probably never gonna listen to it again

Why does this album sound so… Rigid. The instrumentation is just so flat and uninteresting to me, the vocals lack any real kind of spark, and the moments of genuine greatness are bogged down by tedious lengths of monotonous playing. Really don’t get the hype around this at all.

Standout: Transmission to Mercury
Favs: City Swine
Least fav: Excelsior

This album was a very interesting listen. At first I didn't quite know exactly what I was listening to, but as I got further and further into the record I was enthralled by the mix of various sounds and tones. The album required more than one listen for me, (3 approximately) to get the full picture because each time I listened I discovered something new about each and every song that I haven't heard before. The technicality of the mixing on this record is insane. This goes beyond just simple ... read more

This eclectic fusion of Jazz with Black Metal with several passages at Avant-Garde creates an immaculate experience with a slick and raw energy.

The production is very good, it seems that we can distinguish the range of instruments present and at the same time we have a super homogeneous sound.
This project is very creative, where we have an idea that may not even be original but this album sounds completely necessary and if a project thinks to combine jazz elements with Black Metal, I think ... read more

An ominous, looming, foreboding spectre.

The way this album pairs insane walls of deathly guitars with random jazz elements is uniquely impressive. Barbershop quartets, horn sections, marching band-esque drum sections?! I love it. Strange wailing and screaming in the background of the mixes of multiple songs compliment the bigger picture really well too.

This is a truly insane album full of oppressive walls of guitars, manic drums, and disgusting vocals that all come together to immerse the ... read more

Imperial Triumphant - Alphaville

Genre: Black Metal
Country: US

Final Verdict: 69% (Good Album)
Yearly Ranking: 144th / 738

Highlight: Alphaville

Made me think of:
Oranssi Pazuzu
Esoctrilihum
Hail Spirit Noir
Ulcerate

Personally didn't care for this album. The instrumentation feels one note and any time it changes, it doesn't grab my ear. However, I can see why it's getting these high ratings

*200th Review HYPE* This album is fantastic. That was the easy part. However, explaining what the hell this is...that is another beast entirely. It's like if...say black midi, right, they hooked up with Les Claypool and the surviving members of the Miles Davis crew...and then they made friends with Darkthrone...and they all had a shared love of the film Metropolis from the '20s...and then like Captain Beefheart rose from the grave and was all like "This shit is ENTIRELY too mainstream. ... read more

Over the past couple years Imperial Triumphant have easily been one of my favorite bands in the current metal landscape. My original love for them being their great 2018 effort Vile Luxury. Which was an insane combination of blackened death metal, jazz, technical metal, and SO MUCH more. But with this new record Alphaville we are given EVEN MORE. As the compositions, and the stylistic diversity is more vibrant on this album. While this doesn’t really hit you on the opening track as you go ... read more

I'm normally no super into black metal, mostly because the vocals don't really appeal to me, but I actually thought Imperial Triumphant came out with a really solid record worth listening, also that album cover rules.