TRIBULATION - The Chidren Of The Night

May 20, 2015, 8 years ago

(Century Media)

David Perri

Rating: 9.0

review black death tribulation

TRIBULATION - The Chidren Of The Night

Sweden’s Tribulation is a study in contrasts, and the extreme shades of those contrasts. Though initially emerging as raging death-thrash with 2009’s The Horror, its immensely underrated debut, Tribulation has slowly changed the boundaries of the boxes it shatters and has become the still fresh eyeliner on an eternally pale corpse. The transformation really has been that unsubtle.

Though we would have been more than happy if Tribulation had continued the speed-on-speed of the debut, the point on the spectrum this group currently finds itself on is fulfilling as well. In embracing the endless grey of late ‘70s/early '80s Manchester post-punk and staring intently at the metal world through that lens, Tribulation has created a record that is despondent, vinyl authentic and aggressively eloquent. The closest comparison is fellow Swedes In Solitude (RIP), but The Children Of The Night finds itself more expansive than that band's output. Beastmilk and its perfect debut, Climax, come to mind as well, but Tribulation embraces its metal roots far more than Beastmilk does (which is fine, ‘cos like we said, Climax is a perfect, masterful 10). The Children Of The Night is an effort that’s just as washed-out as Tribulation's promo pictures depict. And its detached nature feels so much more subversive than the multitude upon multitude of extreme metal collectives unsubtly yelling “EVIL!” in hyperbolic ways.

Isolating highlights here is difficult, as it is for other such albums that carry the fogged, autumn-drenched mystique of The Children Of The Night. If “Melancholia” could be the vigorous, without-fault death-rock that greets you as you transition, in whatever form, to other realms, then “Sjalaflykt” could be the grand death-symphony, the song unafraid to explore, wide-eyed, into vast places (and it’s here that Tribulation opens the page directly to the index and to the references that read Floyd, Pink and Crimson, King). Elsewhere, “The Motherhood Of God” is a gorgeous track where the minor-key jangle of The Church unexpectedly intersects with equally minor-key Iron Maiden dual leads, while “In The Dreams Of The Dead” and “Winds” stalk with an almost black metal-like maliciousness. And let’s also mention “Holy Libations”, the fedora-wearing, black nail polish sporting, gin-sipping gentleman that sits back in the death-disco lounge and listens in to all the conversations everyone else is having, hoping that the rain outside will never stop (oddly, and despite that fedora comment above, this is also where Tribulation vocalist Johannes Andersson improbably sounds like Immortal’s Abbath).

There’s no doubt that Tribulation has written a singular and distinct record with The Children Of The Night. And while sonically different in so many ways, The Children Of The Night is the cold, visceral chaser to the new Moonspell record, which is also excellent, and also enamored with post-punk, but from an entirely different place, aesthetically. The Children Of The Night is a rare album, one so impactful that you ask the question even though you don’t want to think about it just yet: where can Tribulation possibly go from here?



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