Imperial Triumphant + Knoll

Le trio avant-garde jazz metal new-yorkais pousse son exploration de la décadence américaine dans ses retranchements

Imperial Triumphant

Imperial Triumphant puise son inspiration dans l’architecture monumentale et l’énergie chaotique de New York. Le trio masqué — formé par Zachary Ezrin, Steve Blanco et Kenny Grohowski — développe un univers singulier où le metal extrême rencontre jazz dissonant, expérimentations avant-gardistes et esthétique art déco.

Depuis des albums acclamés comme Vile Luxury, Alphaville ou Spirit of Ecstasy, le groupe repousse les limites du metal contemporain avec une approche ambitieuse et cinématographique.

Avec Goldstar, enregistré par Colin Marston et enrichi de collaborations avec Thomas Haake (Meshuggah) et Dave Lombardo (Slayer), Imperial Triumphant livre un disque plus direct sans perdre son intensité virtuose. Fort de tournées internationales et de passages dans des festivals comme Hellfest ou Brutal Assault, le groupe transforme également ses concerts en véritables performances visuelles, entre mysticisme urbain et spectacle avant-gardiste.

Knoll

Akin to the unveiling of relics carved from an oaken slab, lesser so to that which artisan may conjure from nothing, Knoll seeks the most subtractive of efforts in its offerings. The method is unpinnable, yet is as such: something must be wrought from something else. Its materials predate their misuse; its result contradicts their lessening. A distillation of ingredients leaving but the brittle corpses of what was once unwarped by a wicked sieve - a wholly negative artifact as its response.

And yet, they are familiar, as if these bringings have not been made, but rather freed. It is, then, the utmost purpose as sculptors, to be the conduits of an inhuman goal. That of an infinite testament, unmarred by the collection of dust, and outwardly dedicated to this prospect of impermeable meaning. It is not to say that the arbiter of such works is to be maligned, and especially not to put forth fronts in order to appear so, but that its output must be willed to suffer within these confines, lest it is worthless.

There exists here an affinity for the old and macabre, as well as for profuse literature and its ornaments, however not rooted in lust for their obvious and sometimes shallow aesthetic uses. Instead, as constituent references to a heightened period of artistic value, and emphasis on a deathly, morose world of creations that one may choose to see exclusively. Our namesake, an archaic term, arises from the funeral custom of a mourning bell rung in the leavings of death.

It is within this moniker that we put ourselves in leanings of things ended, endings, and that which must, shall, and will end. Bygone matters of antiquity and those to be antiquated are preserved within the formless ghost of music unto time immemorial. We bring this ideal to you in its first manifestation, As Spoken - a lecture of dilapidated language and its propensity to become riddled with sickness when kept.