Imperial Triumphant: The Dystopian Present

Cultivating success as an avant-garde act is no mean feat. Experimental and technical music resists reduction into an easily replicable formula, while the conservative demands of the extreme metal style is often hostile to innovation – but IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT are the exception which proves the rule. Beginning as a more-or-less conventional black metal act (with neoclassical flourishes) the masked New Yorkers would soon assert their eccentricities on second full-length Abyssal Gods. Their fast, loose and jazzy take on extreme metal was quickly refined on 2018’s Vile Luxury, and an enthused critical reception saw the trio touring North America and Europe. Two years hence, and IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT make their major-label debut on Century Media with the hotly anticipated Alphaville. Distorted Sound caught up with vocalist and guitarist Zach ‘Ilya’ Ezrin to talk film, art and city-life.

It’s no secret that the members of IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT are ardent cinephiles. The aesthetic of Fritz Lang’s towering Metropolis loomed over Vile Luxury; it’s artwork, themes and merchandise. Meanwhile Alphaville takes its name from Jean-Luc Godard’s neo-noir classic; its surreal science-fiction style is writ large on IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT’s latest album. “The French title in translation means something like ‘number-one city’, which we thought was appropriate for a band singing about New York and the New York state of mind,” explains Ezrin. “In the film, which is set in a futuristic dystopian Paris, the director added nothing to the stage design. It’s just as Paris would have looked around that time, which I thought was very creative and interesting.” Continuing, he muses, “I feel that way about New York, especially now. I genuinely feel that we’re living in the dystopian present, and everything that we sing about isn’t looking towards the future, it’s just looking out of the window.”

To complement the dystopic vision of Alphaville is its striking artwork, which was conceived and created by the renowned Zbigniew M. Bielak. “My prerequisites for the cover were very simple,” Ezrin tells us. “I wanted something that had a lot of detail, a lot of intricacies, and a lot of luxury, but which is also very bold. Something that’s recognisable from afar, and enjoyable from close-up.” When asked what made Bielak first choice as artist this time around, Ezrin says, “I love what he did with the PORTAL cover, and WATAIN, and GHOST, and so on. I really enjoy his style.”

For many artists that live in the city, the commanding architecture and frenetic energy of New York serve as their muse, and in that respect IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT are no different. However, their inspiration comes from the city’s sordid underside: it’s dark and murderous history, the gross inequalities in wealth, and the sheer intensity of a city that never sleeps. “We definitely don’t think that you have to live in New York to understand our music, and I don’t think you even need to live in a major city to understand our music,” Ezrin explains, “but you need to have experienced one night in a major metropolis to get a flavour of that level of stress – and, of course, New York is the most stressful; there’s just no energy quite like it. It’s pretty interesting walking around the streets of New York and looking up, because it’s so loud but the skyscrapers are so silent. It’s a strange sensation.”

There’s the temptation to regard their music as performing a social commentary of sorts, and tracks like City Swine and The Greater Good invite these interpretations. “We try to stay as objective as possible,” Ezrin concedes. “City Swine is interesting, because this is an example of us trying to make an interactive song. The lyrics are written in the second person, which was a fun exercise. The subject is very much up in the air. We’re either talking about the homeless population, or the children of super-rich elite New Yorkers: the idea is that these lyrics can be applied to either, and still make sense. It’s up to the listener to interpret them as they will.” Laughing, he adds, “it’s funny. We put so much effort into the lyrics, and you can’t really understand them. It’s kind of ironic. The truth is, in extreme metal, the vocals have to be treated more like another instrument. You have to tweak the timbre and the quality and the sound of that instrument to suit the style of music. I don’t care if you can’t understand me, because it’s going to sound better than if you could.”

What differentiates IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT from their peers is the deep understanding of music that they bring to extreme metal – coming from classical and jazz backgrounds; but for all that, their compositions rarely descend into outright technical indulgence. “We’ve nothing to prove!” Declares Ezrin. “We can play technically using odd meters, and do stuff where we’re each in a different time signature, or we could put out Chernobyl Blues and Transmission To Mercury, which are both in 4/4.” That restraint is all in the service of the band’s broader vision. “It’s just about doing what’s right for the music,” elucidates Ezrin, “and sometimes that skill comes in when what is needed is something extremely challenging to play, but at the same time, it’s not for the sake of making something hard to impress people or challenge other guitarists.”

When asked what fans of Vile Luxury can expect from the new album, Ezrin says, “there are a lot of details. There’s a lot to dissect. We wanted to make an album that you could throw on and love, but then twenty times after listening to it you’re still discovering things here and there.” Alphaville is heavily layered, bringing in assorted samples and instruments to create that distressing, overwhelming atmosphere. “A lot of bands are worried that they won’t be able to play stuff like this perfectly live but,” Ezrin declares bluntly, “we don’t really care.” Their first commitment is to the tracks and the album – everything else is antecedent. “If we hear a song and we decide this needs a brass section there, or we need Taiko drums, then it has to be. The song won’t be perfect unless it’s finished.” That unwavering pledge to quality has proved successful for the band so far, and promises that Alphaville will deliver that unique IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT formula, and more.

Recently you held a competition on social media, where people could submit their covers of Swarming Opulence from the last album. Where you surprised by the reception that received?

Zach ‘Ilya’ Ezrin: I loved that, a lot of people got really creative with it. That’s what we wanted; I’m not interested in hearing someone playing it perfectly. We play it perfectly; I want to hear someone else’s interpretation of it! The winning one was just this noise and piano dark ambient thing, but choosing a winner was almost impossible. Any one of the entries could, realistically, have won. They we are fantastic and we appreciated everyone’s hard work. It was just the creativity that went into reinterpretation the music that meant that it won. It’s fun to share the music. That’s kind of how classical music is. You have your favourite composers, but you also have favourite orchestras, because they interpret the music in a certain way.

Have you ever considered releasing sheet music as a songbook?

Zach: We’re working on it. It’s definitely a good thing. Especially since we can’t tour, we need to generate money somehow, we’re all professional musicians and there’s no work for musicians right now, and it’s pretty tough. The only thing is a lot of our songs don’t use a click, or have oscillating tempos, or riffs that can’t really be transcribed to sheet music. There might have to be some graphic scores brought in. Some modern classical stuff is written like that.

I saw some of the initial sketches for the artwork, and it looked as though Alphaville was going to be a triple-gatefold release?

Zach: Yes! That was going to be insane. The label said no to that, just because it’s very expensive to print a triple gatefold, but I love where his head was at – and who knows? Maybe in the future we’ll manage to get something like a mega-skyscraper triple gatefold reissue.

Any plans for a follow up to Vile Luxury’s graphic novel? A sequel, even?

Zach: We’re trying to make something bigger. We want a narrative, and whether that’s in the form of a graphic novel or a short film or whatever. We’re working on a story right now, and it’s just going to take a while to find the right medium to release it on. We’re working on getting a digital copy of the graphic novel so people who couldn’t pick it up could at least enjoy it. Another graphic novel would be great, and something with more of a narrative would really pull people in, get them excited about dicing into the music. The album itself has an auditory narrative. You listen to it front to back, it has this cinematic journey, of highs, lows and musical drama that could easily be reinterpreted and that’s something we’ve planned.

I understand Trey Spruance (MR. BUNGLE) was involved in the making of Alphaville – what was his role, and how did that come about?

Zach: He was our producer. He was incredible. We played a show in Santa Cruz last year, and after the show he told us that he wanted to produce our next record. I basically thought ‘Well, we’ve never had a producer. It would be good to have an outsider’s perspective, so it’s not just the three of us making all the decisions, and I think as a choice of your very first producer Trey Spruance is a very good one.’ So we’re very happy with everything he brought to the table, it wouldn’t be the same album had he not been there. He also mastered the album, and to be fair Colin Marston (KRALLICE, BEHOLD … THE ARCTOPUS) also played a large part in producing it too, not just giving input on the engineering side of things, but also in the decision making as well.

I hear Tomas Haake of MESHUGGAH was a guest musician on the record too?

Zach: When we were mixing Vile Luxury our bass player Steve said “We have to get Japanese taiko drums on the next album.” It was a goal or wish of his. I think that it’s an exotic sound, it’s a dramatic sound, it’s a very heavy sound – and, living in New York, it was not that hard to find a dojo that had perfectly made Taiko drums. And so we just tracked with Tomas one afternoon, and it went amazingly. We have two hours recorded! It’ll probably end up on the next record too! Kenny wrote that song, and it definitely sounds like the sort of song that would be written by a drummer! It’s almost an IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT take on a MESHUGGAH style, especially the second half.

Any more news from IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT? How have your planned tours been affected?

Zach: I do, we haven’t announced it yet, but I have a side-project I’m releasing with our old label Gilead Media, FOLTERKAMMER. I didn’t write them music, I arranged and produced it, and played guitar in it. It’s like DARKTHRONE meets Wagner, German opera over old school black metal. It was a really fun project, and very different from IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT.

Alphaville is out now via Century Media Records.

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