For those of you who haven't yet experienced the weird and wonderful world of steam metal royalty Imperial Vengeance, here's a quick way in for you. 'The Twentyshilling and Fourpence V-disc' is basically the new single from their acclaimed current album 'Black Heart Of Empire' (reviewed here) and features the albums title track, its prologue Scenes Of Inked Treachery and a previously unreleased orchestrated instrumental number Upon The Stair (and in the Chamber).
As an insight to the album this new three tracker is pretty good. The main track shows all the quirky goodness that is IV's trademark sound, pacey yet controlled post thrash guitar riffage, husky and deep yet very listenable vocals, vast gothic backing soundcscapes, gin palace pianos and a voice over section from former East End gangster and 'tasty geezer' Dave Courteney. The prologue track features more Dave Courteney narration and the closer is a short but sweet bit of gas lit atmospherics that come over like the sound track to a classic hammer horror movie.
However IV are never a band to do things the ordinary way (after all the album comes with a penny dreadful novella) this ep also comes with a pretty impressive bunch of documents that delves a little into the whole Imperial Vengeance and Black Heart Of Empire mythos.
After considering releasing this ep on wax cylinder and shellac disc the band have decided to stick to the normal 'modern' methods of distribution such as digital downloads and compact disc, and thus have decided to charge the princely sum of Twenty Shillings and four pennies to purchase this most worthy of musical edification's. (that £1.00 to us modern types).
Now for a quid you can't go wrong, and I would recommend this to everyone, if they have the album or not.
For fans of... Cradle of Filth, Whitechapel, The More I See, Fornost Arnor.
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