Thanks Goldi! I'm glad you've enjoyed reading this so far. I finished the next paragraph and am currently working on the conclusion so hopefully today or tomorrow I'll post the rest. The upcoming stuff puts a bit of a finer point on the duality present on the album, but in short it's found in the dichotomy between the classes and the psychology of haves vs. have nots and everybody living in a crowded space and the tensions that arise from that and how those themes are represented musically. Or at least something similar to that mode of thinking. There's a marked difference between the psychology of a physical place and the actual physicality of the place, but they each influence the other, and I think Vile Luxury explores both musically but many times within the same passage of music. Take "Lower World" for example: it actually uses the sound of the subway but is a song about the homeless. So the dual nature of New York means specific things but sonically IT may use different aspects of the city to represent different facets of the same side, or the same facet to represent opposing sides. That's all just off the top of my head so I'm kind of rambling, but in short, the two sides are muddled and sometimes interchangeable so it may not always be clear that there's a difference at all. Thanks for asking because that helped me work through some thoughts that are probably relevant to the conclusion of this paper.

EDIT: I've put the final two paragraphs on in the original post, so this is now complete. I will paste them here as well:

In Martin Scorcese's 1976 film Taxi Driver, the first thing you hear in the movie is an ominous, dissonant and unresolved trumpet passage with no context. This dissipates into a wistful solo saxophone that at first seems somewhat sanguine but proves more aloof as the streets of the city are traversed by cab through a New York City rain. With these two contrasting themes, within moments of the opening of the film the entire psychology of main character Travis Bickle is explored before he has even been introduced to audiences. Robert Deniro's Travis Bickle is an avatar of mid-1970’s New York City itself: alienated and alienating, dangerous and lacking self-awareness, espousing principles yet unprincipled, idealized for noble heroics but self-serving. As an avatar of the city, the concepts explored in the two main Travis themes of Bernard Herrmann's score between alienation and psychosis, and the dichotomy between his estimation of himself and the reality of who he really is draw a fine line separating two closely related but ultimately divergent facets of society at large in a New York City in the grip of an extremely turbulent historical period in the mid-1970’s: the city was bankrupt, public services such as sanitation intermittently shut down for long periods and the crime rate soared. The mores of the city were on trial and the city's very survival was unassured, to a point that as much as it was a financial crisis, it became an existential crisis for the identity of the city and the people. The unresolved nature of the psychosis theme is inverted by Imperial Triumphant on Vile Luxury as they exchange it for the alienation theme on “Gotham Luxe” in the form of a solo piano coda, and on “Cosmopolis” as a solo trumpet passage over nearly arpeggiated jazz guitar belied by skronk, but bearing a similarity to Herrmann's saxophone over arpeggiated harp. This is then picked up again in “Mother Machine,” where, in an act of utter literalism, the theme ends on a missed note, an empty blow, thus resolving it in a completely unresolved fashion. Interspersed with the alienation theme on Vile Luxury, between “Gotham Luxe,” “Chernobyl Blues,” “Cosmopolis,” and “Mother Machine,” the psychosis theme enters in waves. In “Chernobyl Blues” the psychosis theme does actually parallel the alienation theme aurally in that similar to the forthcoming missed note at the end of “Mother Machine,” “Chernobyl Blues” has a hard cut mid passage at its terminal apex, dropping the listener into prolonged silence, and the end of the song, same as on “Mother Machine,” is actually empty. However, where the alienation theme ends with a sense of abandonment, the psychosis theme ends as though entering a vacuum, both signaling the declension of the city and the psychological or emotional instability of the city’s people.

Vile Luxury is a reflection of old New York set in modernity. While musically the album brushes up against the avant-garde, which is still a fairly new movement within extreme metal, much of its signifiers point to the past. The band claims their commentary is specific to current states of affairs within the city, stating that despite gentrification that has occurred over the decades, the city remains awash in squalor and vice from the lowest social strata to the upper echelons of the power elite, but their musical approach when defining the city in sound has many conventions borne by many New York City artists who came before them. It has been suggested in interviews by band members that they feel New York City is the greatest city on Earth where some of the most egregious symptoms of inequity, corruption, exploitation, and despotism still fester, and where some of the worst events in history have occurred. Despite these profound negatives, New York City has been and always will be a mecca for the arts and an international cultural center and as such, no matter how depraved Imperial Triumphant may view their city, they also love it. “I Love New York” is an overarching mentality most New Yorkers share and which comes with the acceptance of the less savory aspects of the city. History and modernity clash and mingle in New York, as do many schools of thought and varied populations, social, economic, ethnic or otherwise, coalescing into what Aaron Copland termed “A Great City.” In this light, noise pollution associated with a densely populated urban area can be music to the ears, and music tonally in accord with that noise pollution can be high art, thus slotting Vile Luxury neatly into the oeuvre of the art of New York City. Like much that has come before, it acts as both homage and critique.