Imperial Vengeance

/Imperial Vengeance

Band

Imperial Vengeance

Details

Genre
Metal
Year Formed
2007
Town/City
Colchester
Country
UK

About

2007 saw C.Edward Alexander and David Bryan launch their "Dark Aristocratic Metal" assault on the world and with the release of their debut "At The Going Down Of The Sun" in 2009 through Candlelight Records, the band took up the union flag to audiences countrywide in the name of all things British. 

Fuelled by absinthe and cigar smoke, the album contained ten songs that embraced aspects of symphonic extreme metal, with lyrical themes and imagery largely influenced by the British Empire period. The title track featuring a specially recorded passage from Harry Patch, who at the age of 110 was the last surviving tommy to have seen combat in the trenches of the Pashcendale. Mixed and mastered by Brett Caldas-Lima, the CD soon attracted considerable attention and very positive reviews.

The Autumn of 2009 was exceptionally busy for the band: A live lineup was revealed consisting of Elle Torry and James Murray on guitars with William Drury making way for new sticksman James Last, and a promo video for the track "6th Airborne Division" was shot at the 400 Company studios in London. Mere weeks later, an EP in which the band covered the classic Madness song "Night Boat To Cairo" (with a suitably eccentric video) was unleashed on a fast-growing fanbase. Most importantly, the band made it's blistering live debut at The Garage in London, opening for Chthonic closely followed by a set on Remembrance Sunday at Hellfire Festival at Birmingham's NEC to an audience of union flag waving fans.

2010 saw the duo ink a management deal with Rob Ferguson of Transcend Management, and move labels from Candlelight in favour of the Transcend Music Group, issue a DVD single and hit the road in the summer touring the UK supporting Sabatt. This period also saw work beginning on the second album, "Black Heart Of Empire.'

With a release date set at 23rd September 2011, The duo describe this new work as 'Ten dastardly tales of intrigue, phantasm and Derring-do' and starting with a four-part song cycle entitled 'The Gaslight Aria', the album proceeds through a collection of narratives that present a singularly dark vision. The resulting journey is a breathtakingly complex opiated haze of inspired guitar riffing and dramatic orchestration, awash with neo-Victorian aesthetics and containing no less than one hour of quintessentially British metal.