Review by Daniel for Imperial Triumphant - Goldstar (2025)

Another high-quality record from this unusual New York trio, possibly their finest work actually. Guitarist Zachary Ezrin (Folterkammer) does a great job behind the microphone with his deep death growls being both powerful & well phrased. I really enjoy the drumming of Kenny Grohowski (John Frum/Secret Chiefs 3/Titan to Tachyons) too while Sarmat bass player Steve Blanco also provides us with a capable performance. The black metal component of the Imperial Triumphant's 2010's era is long gone by this point with "Goldstar" sitting more comfortably under an Avant-Garde/Experimental Death Metal tag in my opinion. Even the dissonant elements are probably not consistent enough to call this full-blown dissonant death metal. There's a lot of progressive metal & tech death influence here though too. Unsurprisingly, I find "Goldstar"s best moments to be when the boys simply go hell for leather with the more frenetic & aggressive phases being the most effective & often marrying up with the simpler sections of the album but that's not to say that the more experimental parts of "Goldstar" aren't impressive as they're very smoothly incorporated for a record that jumps around so much. If you exclusively like your death metal of the old school variety then you'll wanna steer well clear of this release but those that like a bit of ambition & creativity should find it to be universally interesting because there's no doubt that it's a classy effort by a forward-thinking extreme metal outfit.

For fans of Pyrrhon, Ad Nauseam & Portal.