Imperial Triumphant’ s fifth album, The Spirit Of Ecstasy follows on from 2020’s Alphaville, via last year’s well-received live album An Evening With Imperial Triumphant. With the three-piece of Zachary Ezrin (vocals / guitar), Steve Blanco (bass) and Kenny Grohowskil (drums) joined by an array of guests, including Kenny G., Trey Spruance, Alex Skolnick and many more, The Spirit Of Ecstasy is a consistently challenging album that pushes the listener’s boundaries with a glee bordering on mania.
With only eight tracks on offer, The Spirit Of Ecstasy still manages to clock in at just under an hour, with most songs running to well over six-minutes in length. The album, taken as a whole, is a varying, oft-dizzying experience, that explores the reaches of extremity, taking in elements of jazz, black metal, death metal and art rock along the way. As a case in point, opening salvo Chump Changes kicks off with an Igor Cavalera-esque barrage before the band add layers of angular, art-punk riffing and jazz-inspired bass runs to the equation. Like Henry Mancini being battered to death by Mike Patton and members of Mayhem, it is unsettling stuff, yet you just can’t tear yourself away. It’s a dark journey, though, and the guitars are tracked so as to ensure claustrophobia is their defining characteristic. With its descending riff, thunderous percussion and acid-bathed vocal, Metrovertigo is a descent into black metal madness, via virtuoso guitar breaks and vast choirs singing into the abyss. Few bands are this ambitious in their desire to explore the aether, and the results are mesmerising. The opening to Tower Of Glory, City Of Shame opens like some long-lost horror movie from the 30s, complete with dramatic orchestration and newsreel narration. It’s a brief segue, paving the way for another blackened slab of noise rock, complete with bizarre cyclical riffing that conspires to leave the listener suffering from vertigo. Yet, for all that such references may paint the direction in which the band are headed, the track is so abstract in its development, that it defies mere description, drawing in elements of Mr Bungle, Mayhem, Elliot Goldenthal and more across its eight-minute runtime. The first side concludes with Merkurius Gilded, another piece that makes use of sweeping strings, before unleashing a torrent of coruscating riffs. Harrowing in nature, even by the standards of what has gone before, the piece slowly deconstructs the melody of the strings, taking the listener on an emotionally charged journey that draws in choral elements and scattershot layers of noise.
Opening the second side, Death on A Highway segues directly from its predecessor, emerging in a swirl of noise in a manner reminiscent of Spiritualized, albeit far darker and denser. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the album’s shortest song it also its heaviest, leaving the listener frayed and spent at a conclusion that borders on the symphonic. Fading to silence, the band wisely leave a gap before indulging in the noire-ish jazz of In the Pleasure of Their Company. Evoking dark streets, dangerous alleyways and lurking hoodlums, it’s the sound of Miles Davis fighting the Mahavishnu Orchestra in Polanski’s China Town, drawing the listener towards the dramatic and deeply unnerving Bezumnaya. Another track that hints at the cinematic menace of Elliot Goldenthal’s soundtrack work, it combines screaming strings, wordless vocalisations and samples in a sonic collision that is as ambitious as it is terrifying. It finally devolves into a churning mess of savage guitars and percussion, but the damage to the nerves is already done, and the listener can only look on in horror as their world slowly dissolves into abstract patterns. The album’s conclusion, Maximalist Scream emerges from the sound of roaring engines and screaming, before sludgy guitars draw us back to the sonic mangling of Chump Change. Harder, punkier and seemingly more accessible than anything else on the album, it still maintains a jazzy edge, and it provides the album with a strong conclusion.
No one enters an Imperial Triumphant album expecting an easy ride. This is harder, darker and wider in scope than almost anything that flies under the banner of extremity. References abound, but for the band, influences are made to be broken, and the results are compellingly unique. Best heard in a single sitting, the pieces work in conjunction with one another, and the album as a whole takes the listener on a journey. From the dense opening, via the album’s claustrophobic core and out again via the expansive finale, The Spirit Of Ecstasy is more soundtrack than conventional album, and it takes your imagination to unexpected locations. Honest, imaginative and absorbing, embrace The Spirit Of Ecstasy as something truly special. It might not be for everyone, music this extreme rarely is, but for those who are willing to brave it, it’s a hell of a trip. 9/10
