What music they make…
Review by Jason Guest
Release date: 20 April 2015
Long gone are the better-than-good-but-not-quite-great Zombie-infested death metal days of Tribulation’s 2005’s The Ascending Dead demo and the 2006 Putrid Remains EP. About as different as 2013’s The Formulas of Death was to 2009’s The Horror, The Children Of The Night sees the band reaching deeper into exciting and innovative musical territories. A haunting organ and a dark piano line to introduce the melody of the aptly titled ‘Strange Gateways Beckon’, the spirits of the undead are ushered in amid waves of subtly evocative guitar chords and melodies and crashing drums, Johannes Andersson’s near-black metal vocals piercing the track’s veiled atmospherics. And so it is with these dark, melodic, and atmospheric elements that the album makes its advances.
Whether to give weight to the riffs, to combine juxtaposing lines for atmospheric depth, or to create intricately winding harmonies, guitarists Zaars and Hultén make full use of their two-guitar approach, and all to serve the music. Textural, intricate, melodic, the riffs are heavy and forceful, their power curiously reinforced by the tempering of the distortion. In doing so, the organ, the piano, and the synths flesh out the tracks with a chillingly supernatural and ghostly feel. And harnessing this feel are the two surprise instrumental tracks, ‘Själaflykt’ and ‘Cauda Pavonis’, both a far-cry from what you’d have expected from Tribulation even two years ago, never mind ten. And so it is for the album, each track demonstrating an undeniable dedication and depth to the music as master rather than servant.
Perched on the periphery of experience and the mundane, this band has refused to remain in one place, and it’s much to their credit. If three albums in, they were still pounding out death metal, Tribulation would have disappeared a long time ago. But the Tribulation of 2015 is a band that may have ascended from the dead ten years ago but thay have developed into something spectacular. If there’s any criticism to be made of the album it’s that it’s perhaps too long, but with such a distinct progression in the band’s songwriting and musical skills, this can be forgiven. Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make.
8.5 out of 10
Track Listing:
- Strange Gateways Beckon
- Melancholia
- In The Dreams Of The Dead
- Winds
- Själaflykt
- The Motherhood Of God
- Strains Of Horror
- Holy Libations
- Cauda Pavonis
- Music From The Other
