In keeping with the theme of their last two records, Imperial Triumphant have focused their fifth album on their hometown of New York City. “It’s about different perspectives of New York, and different lenses that people can live life through in a major city,” vocalist and guitarist Zachary Ezrin tells Apple Music. “New York has such an extreme duality to it, where there’s such highs and lows within a few blocks, and I thought that was inspiring.”
The neo-classical black-metal trio welcome a diverse array of guest musicians on Spirit of Ecstasy, including string quartet Seven)Suns, Japanese vocalist Yoshiko Ohara, Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick, Voivod vocalist Snake, Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance, and—perhaps most remarkably—smooth-jazz saxophonist Kenny G. “We always like to collaborate,” Ezrin says. “And I think that’s becoming a huge part of who we are as a band. I think that stems from the jazz backgrounds that some of us have, where it’s all about playing with new people. It’s exciting to work with musicians who come up with things that I would never come up with.” Below, he comments on each song.
“Chump Change”
“I think this might have been the first tune we started working on after Alphaville came out in 2020. We wrote this one together, and I enjoy those the most—when it’s all three of us in the studio jamming, coming up with ideas and then developing them. As far as an opener goes, it’s just sprinting out of the gate. The opening riff is one of my favorites because we’re all playing in different rhythms. It’s disjointed, but sort of like a rusty clockwork, the gears still turn. That one minor-chord stab in the middle is played by Seven)Suns, a string quartet here in New York City.”
“Metrovertigo”
“This is a very different piece written entirely by our drummer, Kenny Grohowski. We have Trey Spruance from Mr. Bungle providing some choir inputs and sonic textures, which really fill out the piece. I love all those dissonant choir parts—they’re so perfectly buried in the mix, like musical Easter eggs. I know that Mr. Bungle has a song called ‘Retrovertigo,’ but that’s just a coincidence. I didn’t make the connection until someone pointed it out afterwards. The idea came from our bass player actually suffering a bout of vertigo, which was an intense situation.”
“Tower of Glory, City of Shame”
“This is another one we all wrote together, and it stems from a simple concept—we wanted to do a waltz. Again, there’s a lot of polyrhythms. And then, in typical Imperial Triumphant fashion, there’s a gigantic climax. The orchestral intro is performed by Seven)Suns again, and the voiceover is by Jonas Rolef. We also have Yoshiko Ohara, this very talented Japanese vocalist who used to live in New York and work with the band Bloody Panda, on this one. She’s been on Imperial Triumphant records for almost a decade now. She has a unique style of layering vocals with loops and screams, and it’s always perfect for the song.”
“Merkurius Gilded”
“This is primarily my composition—our bassist, Steve, did the last part—and it was me doing my best Bernard Herrmann impression. If you’ve heard the music he did for Taxi Driver, you’ve heard ‘Merkurius Gilded.’ I was really leaning into those dystopian, vintage chord progressions. We have Sarah Woods and Andromeda Anarchia providing choirs, and then we have Max Gorelick, who used to be in Imperial Triumphant and now plays in an amazing band called The Mantle, doing a solo duel with his father, Kenny G. Max really pushed his dad out of his comfort zone into dissonance, and they turned in a masterpiece.”
“Death on a Highway”
“This was written by Kenny Grohowski, and it’s kind of funny because I don’t think he wrote it for the band. He wrote it almost as an exercise, like, ‘What would it be like if I wrote a Suffocation or Cannibal Corpse track?’ So, it has these moments of classic barbarity but filtered through the lens of Kenny, who, as a composer, will often stray from simple ideas. I wrote a lick in there that’s sort of my impression of Adam Jones from Tool. And then we’ve got Trey Spruance on the santur, which is an Eastern stringed instrument kind of like a hammered dulcimer. I feel like this track is almost like a palate cleanser for your next course.”
“In the Pleasure of Their Company”
“This is basically just a 12-bar blues—at least the first part is. Then we came up with the idea of getting people to come play over it, like a late-night jam session at a downtown jazz bar. We've got J. Walter Hawkes on trombone and Ben Hankle on trumpet, who are part of the horn quintet that played on ‘Swarming Opulence.’ Then we have Alex Skolnick from Testament, who plays in a free-improv jazz group with Kenny Grohowski. We also have Percy Jones from Brand X, which is another band Kenny was in, on bass. And that’s just in the first section of the piece. In the second half, we have an incredible guitar solo from Trey Spruance.”
“Bezumnaya”
“‘Bezumnaya’ translates to ‘crazy’ or ‘insanity.’ This is the third sort of Russian doom song we’ve done, and this one is about the Dyatlov Pass incident. It’s a true story from 1959 about missing explorers in the arctic of Russia, but it has this sort of Lovecraftian atmosphere. I wanted to write it in the style that Lovecraft would; there’s so much mystery and intentionally leaving bits of information out that make you want to keep turning the page. So, we tried to approach the song structure that way, leaving the listener little breadcrumbs of information before showering them with so much information that it becomes too much.”
“Maximalist Scream”
“This piece was written by Steve Blanco, our bass player. It’s very heavily inspired by mid-century American automotive mentality and everything that stems from that sort of culture. You can pretty much tell that, on this record, we definitely got into cars. The album title, Spirit of Ecstasy—that’s the name of the hood ornament on the Rolls-Royce. As everyone’s playing started becoming more enginelike, more machinelike—it became about one degree of separation from Voivod. We did a Voivod cover on our last record, and we heard they liked it, so we asked Snake if he would do some vocals. He was gracious enough to do so, and I was really happy with what he did. If I had sung those lyrics, it wouldn’t have been the same.”