Imperium

     About one out of every six unsigned review I do I end up grabbing from somewhere outside our Ultimate guitar thread. Typically speaking, these are bands that I pick because they're a good listen. Other times I just pick something that I think would be easy to review (Trying to write a review for a cybergrind band is just plain hell. On one hand I just want to remark on how much I abhor that genre of music. On the other hand, I abhor people who do that even more). This is one of the former group, so feel free to navigate to the bottom of this review and click on the link (Just do it, reviews take me at least forty five minutes when the band I'm reviewing doesn't have much material and I'm typing fast). 

     Imperium is a prog band, I think the only other prog metal bands I've heard are Mirrors of Obsidian (Matt reviewed them, in short, go check them out. I've put more plays on that album than all but 20 other albums in my itunes.) and Dream Theater. I would venture as far as to say that Imperium plays something that would be more accurately described as techno-metal. Actually, for me, the synths degrade the sound a bit, they're neat for a while, but eventually the heavy use of synths, sounds like cheating on the prog side of things. The choruses in One and Eternal and the intro to Gateways are really the most criminal instances, letting the guitar yield almost entirely to the synths which really makes the song sound stripped down and overdone in those areas. On the plus side, I really dig the way they use the synths in conjunction with the guitar in the verses of One and Eternal, and if used more sparingly and in a less flashy manner, the synths could be a really invaluable element of Imperium's sound. My favorite song of the two (I tend to disregard covers because they aren't as good a measure of what the band does as original songs) is decisively One and Eternal.

     This is sort of a truncated, simplified review for just a couple songs, so I will be ending here. If you have a hard time accepting anything but traditional metal instruments in your metal, Imperium probably isn't ideal for you. For everyone else, myself included however, Imperium's high production values and somewhat weird, synthy sound may be a worthwhile change of pace.

7.75/10

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