It could just be me, but it seems that Swedish Death Metal acts have a somewhat higher bar to get over in terms of quality than most of their peers. It could simply be that the Swedish are inherently better at making Death Metal, but does it really matter? No. What matters is that usually when you pick up some Swedish Death Metal, you know that chances are it’s going to be at least halfway decent. This was, to an extent, the theory that I was working on when I dipped my toe into the foetid waters of Tribulation, who formed in 2005, and in 2006 released today’s subject for review, Putrid Rebirth, a 4 track E.P.
A glance at the track listings unnerved me slightly, as they sail awfully close to the wind of cliché with titles like Zombie Holocaust (off the top of my head I can think of 4 Thrash/Death tracks that mention zombies in the title, and cannot begin to guess at how many feature the Undead in the lyrics at some point or other) and even the album title Putrid Rebirth has a cookie-cutter death metal title feel to it. Furthermore, several of the tracks feature soundbites at the beginning a la Mortician, though thankfully Tribulation manage to restrain themselves, and so we don’t have to sit through half a track’s worth of chainsaw whirring and screaming that adds nothing to the song and frankly gets a bit boring after a while. Ahem.
The album opens with Dread City of Death, and a crazed frenzy of snare beats, whammy bombs and furious solo trading, vaguely reminiscent of Slayer. Fortunately, this is no “mind-bending” tech-death album band, as you would be lead to believe by the opening. Guitarists Adam Zaars and Johnathan Hultén calm down as the song progresses, throwing the odd solo our way but without becoming over-bearing, seemingly satisfied that they no longer need to convince anyone that they can in fact play their instruments. In fact, one downright melodic lead break materialises towards the end of the track, and the overall impression given by the instrumentation is that these are a group of musicians who could quite happily spend the entire album showing off their “sick chops”, but would much rather write some good tunes. I wish most, nay, all bands operated on the same philosophy.
The rest of the album continues in this vain, with each musician tastefully showing off his skills at the appropriate time, (including that most daring of musical maneuvers, the bass interlude) but overall being more concerned with playing together as a group, rather than as individuals. Which is of course the whole point of a band.
The vocals are fairly standard death metal, more rasping than guttural and of course blend nicely with the music without being too much of a strain on the ears. Whilst being perfectly acceptable and suited to the band’s suited, they are hardly “standout” or particularly memorable, to my mind at least.
The album is far from an exhausting tour de force of blast-beats and sheer dumb speed, though like any self-respecting band, Tribulation know where to throw these in, but relent from devaluing speed and “thrashiness” through over-use. The mix of tempos adds some variation and the changes between them are interesting while avoiding the overstated “look at me I just changed tempo/time signature” given off by some. During the aptly named Churning Sea of Absu the band completely abandon speed for a somewhat sludgy two minutes at the end of the album.
All in all this combines to make one very satisfying and pleasing Death Metal EP, which I find grows on me more and more as I listen to it.
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