Tribulation - Sub Rosa in Æternum

Angry Metal Guy 70

Tribulation has battled its share of tribulations. After an interesting decade of gradually shifting from death metal to goth metal with growls with a new drummer every couple of years, the band lost one of their primary songwriters with the departure of flamboyant guitarist Jonathan Hultén. The last album to include him, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, was not bad, but certainly more messy and unpolished than its predecessors, and it was the first to largely halt the band’s evolution. Sub Rosa in Æternum sees the reintroduction of Joseph Tholl on guitars, who originally helped found Hazard, the thrash metal band that would become Tribulation. How has the shake-up affected the music, though?

In the face of all these changes, Tribulation has resumed its long transformation. The death metal to goth metal slider has been yanked almost entirely to the latter end with the introduction of Sisters of Mercy-style clean vocals. All brooding bass and sonorous aching, vocalist Andersson chews the scenery with appropriate abandon and does well with his newfound laryngeal freedom. Yet I am grateful he hasn’t dropped his trademark expressive growls, but instead transitions between both styles with a practiced ease. The ratio varies from all harsh (“Time & the Vivid Ore”), all clean (“Reaping Song”) to a split down the middle (“Saturn Coming Down”) and everything in between.

The instrumentation and compositional style have made a similar shift into dichotomy. On the one hand, the more metal side of the band remains firm, with inventive hooks and multi-part melodies rendered in just enough distortion to remind that this was a full-blown death metal band once upon a time. On the other hand, an injection of goth rock introduces synths like neon-lit noir streets slick with rain. While it seems obvious to use harsh vocals on the former and clean vocals on the latter, Tribulation’s ability to play against expectations make for an amount of variation and dynamism that makes the record positively fly by. “Drink the Love of God” is a quick but effective ditty that recalls Unto Others’ “Give Me to the Night.” “Tainted Skies” has an infectious chorus and I adore the excellent hold-and-charge patterns throughout “Time & the Vivid Ore.” But some of the best tracks of Sub Rosa in Æternum are the furthest from the band’s bed. “Murder in Red” is gleefully grisly in theme but its Ulver-adjacent darkwave is smooth as butter. But “Reaping Song” takes the goosebump-inducing prize with a stunning and emotional gothic tale carrying shades of Nick Cave and Dead Can Dance.

With this broad a palette, Sub Rosa in Æternum could have easily wound up a mess, but Tribulation wisely decided to pull back on the song complexity, with the majority of tracks following a more basic verse-chorus structure than the band’s previous ventures. Thanks to the great melody-craft and lean songwriting this is rarely an issue, but when the imaginativity falters, the flaws are more stark. None of the tracks are particularly weak, but the wings on “Saturn Coming Down” fail to unfurl in full, and “Hungry Waters” doesn’t hit the levels of creepy it seems to be going for. Overall, though, it’s simply a more modest record than some of Tribulation’s heyday, and while there is certainly nothing wrong with that, it also doesn’t elucidate as big a response as an album like Down Below did for me.

Sub Rosa in Æternum feels primarily like the best-case scenario of a transitional album. This term feels a little redundant given Tribulation’s tendency towards ongoing evolution, but in the wake of the impactful line-up change, it makes sense for the band to test the waters with new ideas and influences in a more stripped-down form compared to their recent work. With that in mind, it is a no less accomplished album, a successful blend of established sound and new influences that integrate into an array of playfully diverse compositions. After the minor letdown Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, it’s heartening to hear Tribulation hasn’t lost its touch.



Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Century Media Records
Websites: tribulation.se | facebook.com/TribulationSweden
Releases Worldwide: November 1st, 2024

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