IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT is a progressive black/death metal band from New York, New York. "Alphaville" is their fourth full length album.  They have also released numerous EP s and a demo. There is much I can (and will) say about "Alphaville," but the best description I can give it is metal that is infused with progressive chaos.  Each track is certifiably insane in execution but also clever and thought provoking in ways that are hard to explain.  As a reviewer, I found writing this to be extremely difficult-not because I didn't enjoy the album but the music with "Alphaville," is something that needs to be heard to be fully understood.  With even the best reviews, words can only describe so much when it comes to music, considering listening is the whole point in the first place.

"Alphaville," is not an easy album to digest; it required of me many, many repeated listens before I full grasped what I was hearing.  I liked it the first time I heard it in full just fine—but liking something isn't really the same thing as understanding.  With such a complex album, one full listen may be enough for me to be interested but there is simply too much here to full absorb the first time around. This isn't an album you put on at parties or something in the background when you're doing office work.  Despite the lasting impression "Alphaville," left upon me, this isn't even an album I would showcase to any of my friends curious about getting into metal.  But why?  You can scroll down to the reviews end and see that I have given in a 9 out of 10.  So with such obvious praise coming within the impending paragraphs, why do I say such things about this album?

Because it requires, and deserves, all your attention.  The seven tracks (the additional two that follow are cover songs) combine progressive metal with black, death, and even jazz.  Diving into these tracks is like being a buffet; there is a lot to devour but a lot of reasons to come back for a second or third helping.  But when I say that, I"m not talking about the overall album—I'm speaking about each individual song.  The seven original tracks are a complete journey until themselves, a smorgasbord of eclectic flavors that tease and entice  the senses. The band's lyrics center around most urban decay-the city as a living breathing entity that chews up the unfortunate and spits them out before starting the cycle all over again.   This gritty, and true for a lot of people, reality presented by the band is just as equally highlighted by the music as the lyrics.

The first track, "Rotted Futures," begins with a slow yet methodical approach, the music building up over time until the faint signs of an upcoming subway train can be seen approaching.  I wouldn't call this track's, and others, buildup atmospheric but rather a growing sense of urgency as the action come to an eye. This first act comes to a head at the 1:44 mark, complete with pervasive bass lines and drums that are infused with jazz, for a kaleidoscope of dizzying melody. The action rises and rises but still reaches to even higher points a little more than halfway through the track.  The entire album is like this, just a constant ebb and flow of energy much like that of a city. The second track, "Excelsior," doesn't rely on tension buildup like the previous track but starts off immediate with melodic bass that jumps around the tempo like bullets throw into a fire.  The quick succession of the drums is presented as unbridled chaos that is on the edge of combustion but is held back by quick hands and an even quicker mind.

"City Swine," begins life as low growled vocals, presented in a near conversational tone.  In the background, jazz up clean instrumentation carries the song through the vocals.  The instrumentation finds itself on a low end that leads into a drum solo.  Just when the song appears to be over, crunch rhythm guitar, piano and death growls  in the song in a cacophony of noise.  This is a dirty song that made me feel like my skin was crawling by its end—any song that can create such a sensation is doing something right even if I felt so wrong afterwards. "Atomic Age," is a beast of a track and frightening considering the subject matter contained within.  The music represents this with lucid intervals of paranoid peace intersected with destruction on a massive scale.  The screams backing the death growls in the song's middle portion are unsettling and only serve to raise further caution and damnation.

"Transmission To Mercury," enlightens with the piano intro but there is a sinister feel just behind it.  What appears to sound like brass horns only adds to the feeling of nausea building. The feeling grows very violent at the 1:52 mark: viscous snare, grows, and that fantastic bass.  This song feels like it could be very unsustainable and, eventually, no longer listenable but IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT make it work and turn it into one hell of a song that bangs and jolts in all the right places.  The orchestration makes the song feel very old school yet the metal elements keep it all fresh and exciting. At this point, I realize this band could play any style of music they wanted.  Should they choose the "right" style, I would imagine they could use their talent to make themselves quite famous.  However, that isn't their vision—IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT and "Alphaville" are here to make music that is rich in depth, grandiose in scope, and thought provoking in social commentary. The fact they can make all this rather metal is just icing on the cake.

The title track is, as it should be, one of the best songs on the album.  This one is more riff oriented it and even throws in a bit of groove at parts but most of the song is SPIRAL ARCHITECT levels of progressive shock and awe.  With headphones, this song is quite immense and I felt like I was being pulled apart and put back together but not in the same way as I was before. The final track is "The Greater Good," a scathing judgment upon civilizations ability to let things go behind the scene as long it stays unknown and the cogs in the machine keep on turning.  Musically, this is probably the most eclectic song on the album, especially with the constant change of the riffs and the drumming style.  The bass lays a strong foundation for the song but even it takes a walk down a different path at times.  Much like "Transmission To Mercury," this is a song that could had easily been nothing but garbled, static induced noise but IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT have the ability to take wild ideas, a varied mix of time signatures and instruments put them into a blender, throw in some extreme metal and create one hell of a potion.

I won't talk about the bonus tracks as they are covers won't have any outcome on the scoring of the album.  I've also never heard the originals so I really don't have anything to compare them to.  I will say that both the songs fit the overall feel of the album though. "Alphaville," is an unique album, to say the least, but one that leaves a lasting impression long after the last notes have ended.  The progressive structures hold together the seemingly randomness of the music but the reality is this is a weirdly focused album that doesn't sound like anything else out right now. IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT have proven to be a band with bold ideas who can obviously pull them off. Despite the complex nature and the inclusion of other genres, this is an album with a lot of depth on the metal side of things as well and rivals much of what else the extreme side of metal as offered us this year.