Bats are aflutter. Hounds howl longingly. Deathly chills fill the autumnal air. A foreboding crescent moon hangs low in the night sky—the stage for Tribulation’s new album, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, is set. The preternatural horror and antediluvian mystery of the past have yet again returned, luminous, haunting, and intimate like a fresh corpse. The Swedish Grammy Award-winning quartet toiled for the better part of two years in various innominate undercrofts and ritualized hollows to nail down Where the Gloom Becomes Sound. They emerged with an exhilarating spell of an album. Numinous yet kindred to the gothified castings of Down Below (2018) and its predecessor Children of the Night (2015), Tribulation’s fifth full-length indisputably elevates the Swedes to the highest echelons. The source of their glinting darkness: a yawning, bottomless rift deep within.

“We immersed ourselves in the world of myth and magic,” says guitarist Adam Zaars. “With a specific focus on elemental magic, and the elements, in general, from both the Western and Indian esoteric traditions, not the Buddhist four elements but the five elements. Myth and magic are obviously not something new in the world of Tribulation, but it got a bit more specific on this album. We just present it from a slightly different perspective.”

Where the Gloom Becomes Sound was primarily composed by guitarist Jonathan Hultén, who was also writing for and celebrating the release of his solo album, Chants from Another Place. The well of his Tribulation inspiration ran deep. From singer-songwriter Roky Erickson and vintage Morbid Angel to the NWOBHM and Swedish folk music, Hultén found bewitchment in his own personal belfry, extrapolating on
the tenets of death, resurrection, and whatever resides between. Indeed, the primal pulse and shimmering dissonance to “Elementals,” the ingenious and diabolical swash of “Hour of the Wolf,” and the princely necromancy of “Leviathans” are but several of Hultén’s advances on Tribulation’s prior malisons. To further his offering to the Other and that which lies Beyond, the song-master designed a variety of sonic
enhancements, like those heard on “Leviathans,” “Funeral Pyre,” “Dirge of a Dying Soul,” and “Hour of the Wolf.” The promaja our elders had always warned us about, but we delighted in regardless, is imbued throughout Where the Gloom Becomes Sound.

“Jonathan did the bulk of the songwriting on this album,” Zaars says. “And he mostly works alone. On ‘In Remembrance,’ we had the help of Robert Pehrsson (Death Breath) and Joseph Tholl (VOJD) when we got stuck, and that was really helpful. [I will say] small details can really enhance a song like ‘Hour of the Wolf,’ and I think in that case, it really did! The ‘theremin sound’ on ‘Funeral Pyre’ is actually a guitar, and it’s something we’ve thought about having many times before, but I guess never really did. We always imagined a saw, which could happen in the future, but this time we managed to do it with a guitar. Of course, the reason being that it has a really haunted vibe to it.”

The title, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, was inspired by German darkwave artists Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows. The line, ‘…down, further down, where the gloom becomes sound, on the cell where your love might be found…’ has enchanted Tribulation for several years, and it finally felt appropriate musically, lyrically, and conceptually to pay homage to one of their favorite artists. That’s only part of the Devil’s puzzle, however. Musically and lyrically, they invoked the pancha bhoota—or, five elements—but for those interested the wisps of night and incense burning there’s other frightful and arcane themes at play. From “In Remembrance” and “Dirge of a Dying Soul” to “Inanna” and “The Wilderness,”

Tribulation slip effortlessly into death, out of otherworldly forces, and effortlessly invoke the darkly sublime. Where the Gloom Becomes Sound is a paean to the supernatural—the unspeakable things that bump after twilight. “The same can be said about the lyrical content,” says Zaars. “Myth and magic and, for some reason, the five elements. The inspiration to the song ‘Inanna’ is obvious, but there are more mythical topics explored, and I suppose the interested listeners will have to figure that out on their own.”