Band – Imipolex
Album – Acts of Vulgar Piety
Country of Origin – USA
Genre – Psychedelic Black/Death Metal
Release Date – June 2, 2025
Label – Fiadh Productions
Author – Hayduke X
Review
The “…featuring members of Lepra and Skvm…” on the label page for this release immediately caught my attention. I was less familiar with Skvm, but I was already somewhat obsessed with Lepra. So when AR from Nixil mentioned during (or maybe after?) an on-camera interview that I should check out and interview Imipolex, well, it wasn’t a hard sell. Look below the media player for that full interview.
Released back in early June digitally (by the band) and on cassette (through Fiadh Productions), Acts of Vulgar Piety is a release I keep coming back to periodically. It simultaneously draws me in and pushes me away. The swirling chaos of drums, bass, guitar, and vocals is mesmeric and haunting, but also abrasive. The avant garde nature of the sound is a tough maze to sort through, especially with the warm psychedelia buffeting you off course, but the payoff is worth it for the journey.
The Bandcamp page compares Imipolex to Gorguts, Krallice, Ulcerate and Immolation, and those are certainly apt comparisons, but the band still carves their own path through aural hallucinations. Those bands are touchstones in that they all deconstruct and reconstruct sound and chaos, but Imipoloex is no imitator. Jus and Nyssa (and newer members Ryan and John) use cutting riffs and off kilter rhythms to engage the listener in a miasma of evocative destruction.
NOTE: As of this writing, Fiadh Productions is still showing one copy of the cassette available. Go cop that!
Interview
Hayduke X: Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions and congratulations on the recent release of Acts of Vulgar Piety. It’s a difficult album, and I mean that in a very complimentary way. To start, can you just introduce yourselves, pronouns if you’d like, and your role in the band.
Jus: Thanks for having us. We are happy to chat with you. I am Jus. I do the bass and vocals. Nyssa plays the drums. We write the songs together more or less.
Nyssa: I’m Nyssa (they/she) and I play drums mostly, but also contributed some guitars on the album, solos mostly. Jus and I write either by writing material on our own and fleshing it out together, or just sort of off the cuff in our rehearsal space.
HX: It looks like on your first release it was just the two of you, but you’ve either added members or contributors since. Can you tell me more about that?
J: Early on we had some difficulty finding a guitar player that would work long term. We recorded that album when we were between guitarists. We found one of our current guitarists shortly after recording the album. The other joined when shows started happening after the pandemic subsided. It was then that we started working on writing Acts of Vulgar Piety.
B: Yeah, when we recorded the first album, we really only had skeletons of the songs and the majority of the guitar was written on the spot in the studio because we either didn’t know what our previous guitarist was doing or we didn’t end up using it.
HX: How much do they participate in the writing process? It sounded like it’s mostly the two of you from your first answers.
J: It is mostly the two of us, for sure. The songs start with Nyssa or I coming up with the skeleton of a song. We flesh it out together, and then we show them what we are looking for. When we start arranging the guitars they are a bit more involved.
HX: How do you handle lyrics? Is that shared as well?
J: I write our lyrics.
HX: Tell me about lyrical themes on Acts of Vulgar Piety.
J: I didn’t set out to necessarily write a thematically coherent album but as we worked on it one came together. All of the songs play on the idea of a dramatic change which upends one’s world. In each case the song’s protagonist finds themselves unable to know what to believe in and questioning the very act of believing. It is a motif that you see in the writing of Lovecraft or Algernon Blackwood, where a Christian discovers that God is real, but it is a monstrous and misanthropic God. I always have found these moments to be very affecting and it shows up in the album.
An example of this would be the first song on the album, ‘Martian Blood Mother’. The album art depicts this song. It is about a celestial being which travels to Mars to shed its blood on the lifeless rock. From the stone and blood is born a brood of worshippers. But they worship the power of the blood, not her act of giving them her divine blood. Rather than love for the mother they embrace lust for greater power, they devour each other and their deity.
These themes lead to the album’s title. Vulgar Acts of Piety are those acts of religious observance which are done for petty reasons, like a person who does charity so they can hold it over other people. The motivation spoils the Piety. I wanted to take that a step further to where it isn’t the motivation for the belief, but the very act of believing that is rotted out.
HX: Thanks! That gives some really good context and I think is an idea very much worth addressing. You mentioned the album art, so tell me more about that, how it was created, etc.
J: Yeah, we were pleased with how the art came out. It was done by an artist named Matej Kollár. I came across their art before we even had the album recorded. Their art is all quite surreal. It’s beautiful while having an intensity and nastiness to it. I outlined for them the themes of a a couple of songs and they started sketching ideas. I wanted them to have the lyrics and the music to guide them. Past the subject matter and tone we left most of the details to them. We wanted to trust their artistic sensibilities. It worked out great.
HX: I think it really did. It works well with the album. Can we go back a bit? Can you each tell me how you first got into playing music and how you learned to play?
N: I first got into playing music in a band and writing songs when I was around 16. I am originally a guitar player, so I did guitar and vocals in a black metal band in high school and have pretty much been consistently in bands since then (about 17-18 years). I learned guitar by learning Death songs mostly lol. I didn’t really start seriously playing drums until we formed Imipolex in 2017 and I pretty much just learned as we went. So basically I’m self taught for both and I kinda just wing it until I figure it out.
J: I also am self taught. I started playing guitar at first, teaching myself Nirvana songs when I was in high school. I ended up playing bass in some bands but I wasn’t too serious about it. After high school, I didn’t really play music for several years. When I got back into it I focused on the bass and started to learn how to play properly..That was when we formed Imipolex. So for both of us there has been an element of learning as we went.
HX: What are your inspirations to play music? Or to write this particular album?
J: This album wasn’t consciously made with any concrete motivations. It was just the product of constantly trying new things and writing songs. Eventually we had a whole album. I make music because I literally can’t conceive of doing anything else. I stopped making music for years and tried to be a normal adult but it simply didn’t take. I draw inspiration from all over the place. Bands inspire me with their music but I draw from a lot of different mediums. Books and movies almost inspire me more though. I get into taking ideas from them and seeing how I can communicate those ideas in music. It’s a different challenge from writing something inspired by another band and one I really enjoy.
N: I would say I was inspired to play music by my parents who are both music lovers, though not musicians, as well as growing up with musician friends. Also, it’s always been the easiest way for me to express my emotions and thoughts. At this point I’ve been writing original songs and playing in bands since I was 16. It kinda feels as necessary as eating for me at this point.
As far as the motivation for the album, I think for me Imipolex has always been a band that I use to push myself as a musician and step out of my comfort zone. From the beginning really because I didn’t really play drums until I decided to start this band and have really gotten to where I am as a drummer because of Imipolex.
HX: This album was released on cassette by Fiadh Productions. How did that come about?
J: We reached out to a bunch of labels and we were pleased to see that Fiadh Productions wanted to work with us. It was easy to decide to work with them. We are all fans of the label. Nyssa’s other band, Lepra, has released music with them. Knowing that they had a positive experience with Fiadh left us feeling confident about working with them.
HX: What are you each listening to for fun these days? Any new finds you’re excited about?
N: I’ve definitely been listening to a ton of Ozzy and Sabbath lately for obvious reasons. For new stuff I’ve been listening to the new Caustic Wound a lot and Bile of Man Reborn by Fleshvessel off I, Voidhanger records (which is kinda my dream label for the next Imipolex release).
J: I have recently been enjoying Exhaust by Pyrrhon quite a bit. Their other stuff has been good, but Exhaust has turned me into a huge fan. Knoll’s As Spoken has been in regular rotation. I have also been really enjoying the debut album from our friends in Hallucivore.
HX: Will you be playing live in support of the album? If so, any larger tour plans?
J: We have a few shows coming up. We have our eye focused a little bit more on new material at the moment. In the spring, I would like to get on the road and head down the east coast but we are only just starting to plan that out. Partially that is because we have been playing these songs for a long time.
HX: That’s fair. What can you tell me about the new material that you’re working on?
J: We are playing with a lot of new ideas and seeing what will stick. We are embracing more of the psychedelic side of things at the moment. We are also playing around with trying to make the songs more concise while still having the density and complexity of our other releases.
HX: Sounds intriguing! Is there anything either of you would like to add? Anything I didn’t think to ask about?
J: Yeah, we are excited to see what manifests. We are always experimenting with new ideas. Imipolex’s sound being chaotic as it is, means that any idea might yield something interesting or it might not. It’s hard to know sometimes until we try it. So that makes me hesitant to say anything too definite. The thing I can say for sure is that it won’t be another five years before we have more music to share with the world.
I think your questions covered the spectrum of what we are all about quite well. I don’t have anything to add.
HX: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me!
J: Likewise!
Biography: Hayduke X has been writing for MoshPitNation since June of 2016. He is also a contributor to The Metal Wanderlust. Prior to joining the MoshPitNation team, Hayduke published reviews on his own blog Rage and Frustration. In addition, he has DJ’ed an online metal radio show of the same name as his blog, written for TOmetal.com, done interviews for Metal Rules, and collaborated with The Art of B Productions to create video interviews with a wide variety of bands.
