As someone who has never been to New York City, all I have come to understand about the Big Apple has been filtered through secondhand accounts or from artistic interpretations via literature, film, and now, music with Imperial Triumphant’s Vile Luxury. Now, Imperial Triumphant’s music has always appeared to be a cipher for the New York City experience and done a rather impressive job at this with Abyssal Gods and the Inceste EP, yet as much as I love and enjoy those specific releases, Vile Luxury seems to capture the essence of the city in a much darker and more mechanical fashion. For my money, Vile Luxury is the strongest thing Imperial Triumphant has released yet.

Vile Luxury tears open with “Swarming Opulence” and its literal swarm of horns; in comparison to previous records, Vile Luxury makes a conscious effort to incorporate jazz instruments (and jazz instrumentation). With an opener such as this, it becomes clear that Imperial Triumphant are expanding beyond their whirlwind blend of dissonant and cacophonous riffing into a, dare I say, more “structured” realm. Though, when I say structured, I do not mean to imply that previous efforts from Imperial Triumphant were unfocused, rather that Vile Luxury has an industrial, brutalist template that is constantly driving the record forward. Yet, with the industrial nature of this record, Imperial Triumphant are not following in the footsteps of Godflesh, rather, the entire album feels like early 20th century factory with a rhythmic and calculated “assembly line” where each aspect of the band is independent of the other— guitars swirl and scream, basslines hurdle to-and-fro with urgency all while drums pound away frantically like a runaway train—yet, despite all the chaos, come together and form a complete, actualized product. Just like a factory would.

Keeping in-in line with the industrial nature of the record, Vile Luxury not only manages to encapsulate the manufactured aspects of New York City, but harkens back to the 1927 masterpiece of a silent film, Metropolis. Even the gold masks of the band’s current visual incarnation are reminiscent of the robotic skeleton of “False Maria” from the film, but it goes much deeper than just aesthetics. One of the central themes of the film is the division and disparity between the aristocratic class and the working class, even going so far to force the working class to reside beneath the city as a literal embodiment of the fact that, in this world, the working class is “beneath” the wealthy, patrician class. Impressively, “Lower World” manages to aurally personify the film’s vision of this segregation in an abrasive, challenging fashion.

Not only does Vile Luxury accomplish in reinterpreting key aspects the film such as the infamous “Moloch” scene, but Imperial Triumphant find themselves able to expand upon the well-established and well-regarded soundtrack of the film, as well. Take, for instance, the latter half of “Cosmopolis” with its gritty, oppressive tension. If you close your eyes, you can just see the explosion of an industrial revolution that wipes out everything in its way. Much like the weight that the laborers who were forced to build these factories bore on their backs, you can feel the oppression, the struggle, and the soul-crushing drudge of a never-ending task-list as “Cosmopolis” progresses before it finally reaches its breaking point and all collapse under the tyranny of such an unsustainable practice.

As much as I have come to enjoy this record, I do have a few qualms with it. Namely, the last two tracks, “The Filth” and “Luxury in Death”; both of which suffer from the same issue: the outros. “The Filth” reaches a chaotic climax, but then just wafts away to nothingness and loses almost all of the steam that the song had built up. “Luxury in Death” “ends” with some unbelievably anguished screaming even more twisted and tortured than we saw on “Chernobyl Blues” before a strange, lull of silence which is then broken by a few, sparse notes that do not seem to callback anything previously established in the record. The ominous arpeggio creeps in and then slinks out, all within a few seconds and with no real, discernible motive. As strange as this ending is, and as much as I would have preferred the song to end with harrowing shrieks of total depravity, I believe that a band like Imperial Triumphant is a calculated and precise band—everything to do has reason or justification—so the rather head-scratching decision to interject those sparse notes into the end of “Luxury in Death” must be relevant on some level, I just do not know what or why…yet.

All in all, I love this record. I was beyond excited for the album and before you accuse me of allowing hype to disproportionately color my view of the record, I would just like to say that there were numerous records this year (like one I previously reviewed for the blog) that I was more than a little excited for, enjoyed upon hearing them, and then quickly found them to be unsubstantial. Vile Luxury is not one of those records. At this very moment, Imperial Triumphant have securely found a spot on my Album of the Year list (and likely in the top 5). I encourage you to check out this release if you have not and to watch Metropolis as a complement to the record. You will not be disappointed.

Listen: Here. Purchase tapes: Here.

– CBE