Sometimes, an album requires repeated listenings before the gist of it really sinks in, and "The Time Before Time" is one of those CD. When I first heard this, I was fairly unimpressed, and thought to myself "great, another fairly generic European death/thrash outfit" - nothing about the band grabbed my attention (except for the impressively informative booklet - one of the nicer jobs out there that details the entire history of the band), and so I filed this away not thinking it would become a regular in my CD tray. A month or two went by, and then a friend who was going through my CD collection picked this out to listen to as he remembered hearing positive things about it in the past - I threw it on (expecting to be as unimpressed as I was the first time), but this time around it seemed a bit more "fresh" sounding. It didn't exactly blow me away, but neither did it bore me as it did initially...perhaps I had rushed to judgement on it? Since then, I've found myself playing this more and more often, and with each listen I've grown to enjoy it more. Perhaps it's the no bullshit approach the band takes in their music, or perhaps it's just a testimony to how boring a lot of today's new releases are (something I find myself pondering with more and more frequency), but Imperator have definitely grabbed my attention...it just took a few listens to get it. I suppose a lot of why I dismissed them offhand the first time was because they aren't exactly playing anything ground breaking (imagine a slowed down version of early Kreator with a bit of an Exodus influence as well), and throw on top of that a lack lustre production job that really dampens the energy level of the music, and you can see why this didn't really shine through the first time... still, even with these faults, the quality of the music underneath eventually worked it's way out, and this has now become something I find myself playing quite a bit, especially when I'm in the mood for something that has that old school (not retro mind you) vibe running through it. I'd urge those of you who enjoy low-key death/thrash (emphasis on the death part) to give this a listen - Imperator might not be the fastest band around, or the flashiest, but their sincerity is obvious, and in my books an ounce of sincerity is worth a pound of anything else...

© 1999 chorazaim