Review by Greg on December 18, 2024.

From Algeria hails a band with a moniker sure to cause some reaction in every metalhead: Jugulator. Hey, I didn't specify which kind of reaction, after all. Anyways, their third full-length Imperator Insector hit the shelves last summer, and I don't know what to expect from it. It's worth noting that the album is based on a sort of concept, where the leader of this insect-like mutant species represented on the artwork, apart from apparently having decapitated Joey Belladonna, fights to overcome humanity. So, expect a predictable cheesy, wannabe-menacing intro with a war declaration, courtesy of the imperator himself, and we're ready to go.

Right off the bat, Jugulator seems to deliver a quite by-the-numbers modern thrash experience. What sets the guys apart from other similar bands, in a sea of overproduced records of average, moderately fast modern Exodus-esque revival, is the vocals. Frontman Ramzy Abbas employs a half-clean vocal style, with all due proportions of the Eric A.K., or maybe John Bush, school of melodic yet gritty frontmen. A welcome change from the norm, and while certainly not nearly as interesting or charismatic as those two, it's a valuable asset nonetheless. The rest of the band is hardly something to write home about. I even find it difficult to believe that the drummer is human – or at least, I mean, I hope for him, but his performance, almost devoid of fills, while competent, fails to convey any kind of excitement.

There is also a worrying trend where every song is as long, if not longer, than the one preceding it, and it all starts with a 5-minute duration. It's quite a surprise, then, that the longest episode 'From Underworld' is the one that initially convinced me the most, with maybe the only refrain that might be able to stick in your memory, and it's the only one they perplexingly don't pick up later in the song, where they lose themselves in hit-or-miss instrumental solutions (are those tribal percussions?). The only other things I clearly remembered after some listens were how the two tracks that bookend the LP sound virtually identical – this is a complaint usually thrown around when there isn't a great deal of variety between them, but no, the chorus is nigh identical – and the guitar melody at about 3:50 in the title-track, which might be the Judas Priest homage the band name had been suggesting all along.

Adding to this, a couple of strange phenomena needs a deeper analysis. Most of the songs feature some blast-beat sections, along with quasi-blackened riffing, scattered across the album, as a welcome touch of variety. Nevertheless, for some reason they always, always, always appear after a solo is finished (bar one), to the point that – I swear I'm not kidding about it – by the time I arrived at 'From Underworld' I totally nailed the timing of the growl, despite that being my absolute first listen of the song, so predictable it was by then. I can't believe they didn't notice how strange of an effect it has.

Weird things don't end here. The special edition of Imperator Insector includes no less than the whole album again, only with a guest musician in every track. Still wondering what the reason for keeping those two as separate versions was, a listen was enough to convince me it was the right thing to do. I genuinely started to wonder whether said guests were meant to improve the songs, with a personal twist, or ruin them, they're that puzzling. Sure, sometimes hearing a different vocal approach might be refreshing, and sure there's a bass solo added somewhere, but more often than not there was a head-scratcher waiting for you. For the strangest pick, I'm honestly torn between the absolutely botched solo in 'Infected Focus', which is so cacophonic that it might as well have been played by the late Richard Benson, if he wasn't already dead by the time the album came out, and the second verse of 'Atomic Insecticide' that now features clean vocals so pathetic that they might have been taken straight from a Tenacious D song.

Summing up, I can't deny Imperator Insector was a fun album to write about but, when all is said and done, its musical worth was the least fun aspect.

Rating: 5.3 out of 10