Imperial Vengeance - 'The Twentyshilling and Fourpence V-disc' (transend) 4/5

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.

Imperial Vengeance - 'Black Heart Of Empire' (transend records) 4/5

This is the second full length album from Essex 'steam metal' outfit Imperial Vengeance, and after their flirtation with World War One on their debut release 'At The Going Down Of The Sun', they now step back in time and serve up a delicious slice of metallic Victorianism that can only be described as a complete gem. This album even sounds Victorian, with its haunting orchestrated passages, gin palace pianos and penny dreadful narrated sections. Hell if they really did have heavy metal in Victorian England I could well image Charles Dickens being in this band, or at least serving up some lyrics for them.

The albums first four tracks: Scenes Of Inked Treachery / Black Heart Of Empire / The Voice Of Thelema / The Ghost Of Light form a nice little conceptual suite in the aforementioned 'penny dreadful' style. (Apparently, on release the album will come with a 'penny dreadful' novella to accompany it - sadly my advanced review copy didn't come with it, so I can't comment). But from what I can make out it's a dark and twisted tale of hauntings, death and terror... all good stuff.

Beyond the concept section the album continues in much the same vein. Main man C Edward Alexander (ex Cradle Of Filth) is in fine form, with barked vocals, driven guitar work and powerful orchestrated sections, and there's some tasty operatic vocalisations from guest song bird Lori Lewis (vocalist with Therion) to provide the perfect counterpoint to the Blind Beggar knife fight brutality; this is most true on The Devil In The Detail, which for me is the standout track on this really rather excellent album.

Now I wonder if this is available on wax cylinder?

For Fans of... Cradle Of Filth, Cathedral, Within Temptation, Whitechapel etc..