Aquila – Imperium (2009)

Opening with an intro track by the same name of the album “Imperium”, Aquila starts showcasing their musical abilities since track one and never let go. This Canadian outfit plays Metalcore and is pretty good at it.

While Metalcore is not one of my favorite genres, I have no problems in recognizing bands that have talent and do a good job at playing the music. The vocals is the part that for me kills this genre, but Aquila does a good job at sounding more like Trash/Death Metal the majority of the time while maintaining their Metalcore roots.

Featuring a very solid production and well composed songs that don’t fall into the traditional cliché’s of the band’s main genre (the breakdown-yelling-trashy riffing-breakdown-etc-etc). The songs are complex enough and feature some very solid guitar sections that can be comparable to any ‘greats’ of the genre and Trash/Death Metal bands like Hatesphere and others that border in the fine lines of the two genres.

The harsh vocals are very well done, and alternated with almost Black Metal sounding higher pitched sections sound very good, except for the ‘clean screamed’ parts, but this is just my opinion, and objectively they sound pretty decent and comparable to big name bands of the genre. The drumming is pretty solid and it goes all the way when needed, but keeps its distance most of the time in order to put all the music together.

The guitar riffs are fairly original and never get tedious like in most Metalcore releases that I’ve encountered. Aquila shows great promise in musicianship and I always believe in giving credit when credit is due, especially in the musical aspect of an album regardless of the genre of Metal. The songwriting is pretty good and while simple, it’s catchy and heavy.

Experimentation is another thing that made this album an interesting listening experience for me since the band uses some female vocals at the beginning of “Never to Awake” in order to create a very good transition into a heavier section of that song. They also use a nice acoustic interlude for the album in the track “Vae Victus” in order to pace the listener during their experience in listening to this album. 

For a self-released album “Imperium” is one of the best I’ve received in this genre, and should gather enough attention of labels or fans of the genre. I would hope that this band gets picked up soon, so they can bring their music to the masses, since I think it’s considerable better than most of the crap that Metalcore listeners have to deal with these days.

Release: June 27th, 2009

Country: Canada