The Children of the Night, the glorious third album from Swedish metal charmers Tribulation, begins with an invitation. A backdrop of cello, church organ and piano gives way to a midtempo full-band rumble, and then Johannes Andersson grunts like a mad old man curling a finger and commanding you to come along. "Beckoning the children of the night, the spirits of the undead and the lesser lights," he sings on "Strange Gateways Beckon". These first two minutes suggest the beginning of some grand adventure—a Tolkien-like walk through the woods, a Dante-like descent into depravity. And they are: A heavy metal record that wanders beyond any comfort zone, the hour-long The Children of the Night is a sprawling, compulsory tale that doesn’t turn dull.
Tribulation have never made an album quite like this: More than a decade ago, most of the band played adolescent, hair-whipping trash as Hazard. Five years after a name change, they re-emerged with The Horror, a claustrophobic mixture of death metal, black metal and thrash, intertwined by arty interludes that suggested major ambition. They pursued it unapologetically and even to excess on 2013’s The Formulas of Death, which began with a tambura drone and ended with a shape-shifting 13-minute mess called "Apparitions".
On The Children of the Night, Tribulation push all those influences and ideas toward the center. It’s as if they’ve pondered the relatively populist successes of their fellow countrymen—Ghost B.C., In Flames, even Watain—and rediscovered the value of concision and motion. Psych rock and prog metal, thrash and classic rock commingle in three-to-seven-minute songs, bearing echoes of not just Mercyful Fate and At the Gates but Led Zeppelin and Hawkwind, the Doors and dub. Led by brilliant guitarists Jonathan Hultén and Adam Zaars, these ten incisive songs cut away tangents and bristle with urgency. “Holy Libations” is heroic and surging, with one seeming crescendo and dashing solo piled atop another. The racing “Melancholia” powers through death metal before cresting with a rock-god solo that feels forever on the verge of falling apart.
By and large, though, it’s the band that makes these songs so stunning, not Andersson. He sings in a perpetually gruff monotone, offering morose observations and dramatic revelations. During "Holy Libations", he delivers a dense verse about the solidarity of misery and then tries his best to break his typical pace with a sort of staccato half-rap. He stumbles around the beat, straining with effort. Tribulation, then, are a little like metal’s the Hold Steady—a righteous rock band burnished by high-flying guitars and big keyboards but led by a singer who seems to have shown up late for practice with a notebook full of quips and a belly full of booze.
Tribulation let Andersson’s thorny vocals stand alone, backing him only occasionally with harmonies; for a band that composes with near-classical rigor, he remains the scratch that can’t be buffed. This tension becomes apparent when it disappears. Mid-album instrumental “Själaflykt” moves from doom-like dirge to mid-tempo boogie, like The Ventures penning a summertime special for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. But by song’s end, the action feels bloated and defanged. When his growl bullies its way into “The Motherhood of God,” the friction is newly welcome.
Metal critics sometimes snipe at each other for preferring extreme or arty metal to the sort of music to which actually raise beers and fists. There is no way to arrive at a consensus artist who will satisfy everyone, of course, but The Children of the Night comes close. On one hand, the irascible Andersson sounds like the kind of bandleader who hopes to follow you into an alley with a lead pipe. But the organ-loaded, solo-bejeweled “Strains of Horror” is an anthem. The hook of “Strange Gateways Beckon” just begs to be shouted back at the band. Sure, Andersson is a bit too brusque for complete crossover success, but the exceptional The Children of the Nightextends an open invitation to a very wide audience.
