(Wil Cifer provides some thoughts about the new album by Sweden’s Tribulation.)
Up until this point Tribulation has been a more fascinating creature on stage. The Children of the Night carries those wandering moments of majick the band summons on stage and transfigures them into a more solid form.
Often the album trades the traditional metal crunch for a more multifaceted organic tone that just happens to be played loudly. This is very much a guitar-centric album. The riffs are more than hammers that pound your head until you begin banging it, but tools to entrench the dark melodies into your hungering ears. On first listen, certain songs have the brighter epic metal tone that might cause Enslaved comparisons to abound, but the band is setting the stage for something more sinister lurking under the surface, while Enslaved sails their prog power longboats into Norse lore. Continue reading »