Imperial Triumphant + Knoll

Imperial Triumphant

Amid the towering monoliths of New York City, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT finds inspiration in the beauty and horror of the modern metropolis. Like a feverish vision of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the city’s vast architecture and restless energy pulse through the band’s music. With their latest album Goldstar, the masked trio continues its exploration of urban mysticism, blending extreme metal with art deco grandeur, avant-garde experimentation and the looming soundscape of New York itself.

“The theme of every IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT record is New York City. That’s the fuel,” explains guitarist and vocalist Zachary Ezrin, who founded the band alongside bassist Steve Blanco and drummer Kenny Grohowski. Through acclaimed releases such as Vile Luxury, Alphaville and Spirit of Ecstasy, the trio has steadily expanded the language of extreme music, pushing its limits with a bold mix of jazz, dissonance and cinematic ambition.

With Goldstar, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT deliver their most focused and immediate work yet. Tracks like “Eye of Mars” and “Hotel Sphinx” condense the band’s virtuosic intensity into sharper compositions — a shift shaped in part by two relentless years of global touring, including appearances at Hellfest and Brutal Assault, as well as tours alongside Behemoth, Carcass and Zeal & Ardor.

Recorded by Colin Marston and mastered by Arthur Rizk, with guest appearances from Thomas Haake (Meshuggah) and Dave Lombardo (Slayer), Goldstar further cements the band’s singular vision. On stage, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT elevate their theatrical universe with new masks and an upgraded visual show — a gilded, avant-garde spectacle as striking as their sound.

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 d