Tribulation: Lifeblood Running Through Their Veins

Now that they have been invited in, TRIBULATION have proven to be a hard band to get rid of. The band’s new four-track EP Hamartia marks the start of a new era for the band as Joseph Tholl steps in to replace the departing Jonathan Hultén. Whilst getting their long-time friend to take up guitar and songwriting duties alongside Adam Zaars was somewhat of a no-brainer for the band, Zaars says that it wasn’t a decision they made lightly. With a new member now settled amongst their ranks, let the rituals begin.

Zaars took us back to the first steps that the band decided to take once it was clear they would be losing half of their creative mind. “We knew we wanted to continue and we knew we could continue and that was really the first thought. We knew we would eventually have to find someone else, preferably someone who could help with writing songs but I remember not being in much of a hurry. We even took some promo photos as a three-piece that never got used because Joseph joined so we took some new ones. We wanted to find the right person for the job and if that took a while then so be it.”

Thanks to the members growing up and playing music alongside Tholl, the transition was as smooth as possible. Though jumping right into the heart of the band at this point in their careers would be no easy task, they were all confident that their friend had the makeup of TRIBULATION inside his DNA. If anything, Zaars has found that their new dynamic has allowed them to work closer as a collective than in recent years. With their pre-existing relationship removing the chances of any embarrassment, they can challenge each other’s ideas freely and this new perspective will likely shine through in future projects.

“We had thought about Joseph even before it happened, he had even written a few riffs on a previous album. One accidentally actually where his guitar was out of tune and it was playing this melody when we opened the case and it’s on the song Suspiria from The Formula of Death. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and we’ve played with him since we were kids as well, and we’ve always heard and discussed this for years. We always heard TRIBULATION-esque things in his music regardless of which band he was writing for.”

Whilst their latest release is the result of the band experimenting as a reformed creative unit, you would be sorely mistaken for taking this as nothing more than a transitional EP. Even on a project like this, the band are exploring themes of dystopian sci-fi and as Zaars himself says, “draping” political commentary in a religious language to “clad it in mythic concepts whilst still commenting on the contemporary world”. Challenging himself to find new ways to comment on things he is passionate about is the driving force behind his writing but balancing that with music that is instantly captivating is where the real beating heart of the band lies.

“That’s just the way we do it and it doesn’t have to be super deep, I like to go deep but I’m also a very shallow person. I like beautiful things and beautiful words and cool words so I’m fine with that as well. I have to, at least with my lyrics, I have to find something that I care about and it’s got to reflect whatever TRIBULATION is because that’s quite difficult to define I think. As soon as we step outside of it we notice, so it has to be within the thing that we’ve created that is TRIBULATION, so you’ve got to find new angles for the lyrics.”

“People are super scared of being shallow or whatever but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that sometimes, why not. That’s what I grew up loving, I didn’t care about what the lyrics were about, if it contained cool metal words about witches or gore, that’s fine, that’s all I need.”

On Hamartia’s fourth and final track, this balance is pushed to new limits as the band tackles the BLUE ÖYSTER CULT track Vengeance. After much deliberation as to whether their vision for the cover was adding to the original material or not, the final result is a demonstration of the layers within the band.

“We didn’t really think about it in that sense, maybe we should’ve actually. It’s always difficult for us to find covers because we usually want to pick a song with clean vocals and we don’t want to ruin it. I don’t think we thought it through when we decided on covering this song, we had a bunch of other options and we realised we couldn’t do them so we thought well at least we can maybe do this one. We had the guitars, bass and drums recorded and it just didn’t really sound that amazing we thought.”

After adding vocalist Johannes Andersson’s clean singing accompanied by some backing vocals, the band were satisfied that they had creatively pushed themselves and pushed the boundaries of what TRIBULATION is. By accentuating the darkness within the track, they’re able to extend the entire creative process of the band into new areas. Providing a gothic stained glass window to look through that adds a new perspective but ultimately, still sounding really cool.

Hamartia is out now via Century Media Records.

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