Imperial Triumphant

Obey your narrator.

New York City has been a character in its own right for nearly as long as it’s existed. And from Sinatra to Nas, musicians have sliced out portions of the sprawling metropolis and molded it into a setting, a myth, a sonic background. But few, if any, have done what Imperial Triumphant do: turn New York into an eldritch abomination.

The NYC trio play a brutal and confounding mix of black metal, avant-garde jazz and classical tinged madness that crafts a sound, and a version of the city, that’s compelling despite its grotesque nature. Or perhaps it’s compelling precisely because it’s so grotesque. The city, in Imperial’s telling, is a great clockwork force, lording over the ant like humans funneled through it, demanding they submit to its will and become more machine than man for its own money fueled ambitions. That’s been a narrative through line in all of their work, but for their newest, Spirit of Ecstasy, Triumphant created a triumph even within their own Lovecraftian lore. We chatted with them below.

File Under: Interviews