The debut album of Tribulation is a fine slab of old school Swedish death metal with some different touches here and there. Recently they had released their second album The Formulas of Death. I read that it was supposed to sound quite different and was quite lengthy (75 minutes). So it was time to check out the kick off of their short European tour in support of this album in Tilburg.

They had brought no less than three support acts the first one Alchemyst had just started playing when I entered the venue. This is a German black / death metal band which I didn’t care for much as it is pretty standard sounding and not too well played. And the singers take at corpse paint reminded me more of Goldfinger than Dead.

The second band was another German thrashy black/death metal band I had never heard of: Venemum They were quite okay, even though the left guitar was way too low in the mix.

The third support was yet another German band named Ketzer who have a pretty punkish approach to black/thrash with excessive amounts of smoke. Many people in the audience seem to have come especially for them. To me it was fun for a song or two but then it became dull and repetitive. Halfway through the set the power on the stage went off leaving the band in the dark and soundless. After the power was restored they were allowed to play only one song.

Then finally Tribulation appeared on the stage. And the reports I read were quite correct, the style had changed significantly. Gone were the chainsaw guitars and the aggressive riffing. They had brought in a lot more progressive elements and clean guitar section; in fact the whole sound was much cleaner. Well mostly it was still death metal and a quite original take at it, I must admit. So I guess the new album will need some time to soak in. They only played one song of the debut (The Vampyre) and the rest of the set was filled with new songs. Pretty solid gig really.