Second offering from Vancouver’s Tribunal and it’s an eagerly awaited album after the rave reviews for their debut EP – 2023’s The Weight Of Remembrance. This is a breath-taking album, packing an almighty punch into its 48 minute running time.
There’s five of them in the band but it sounds like a lot more with the expansive cinematic arrangements and a hugely focussed ‘doom’ feel to it all. These are not songs in the normal sense, these are opuses crafted with crashing riffs, sawing cellos and mournful strings. Yet there are also plenty of moments when the musical palette sparkles and glows brilliantly before a funeral bell, or some such, brings it all crashing down to earth and below that into the hell of Hades.
What makes them stand out from the crowd is their mighty twin vocal attack. Etienne Flinn growls with dark horror while Soren Mourne adds the reflective but powerfully passionate female vocals. It’s a great blend which really sells the songs.
Incarnadine opens it all with Soren’s cello, an almost pastoral scene before the riff and power comes in. It’s a thoroughly beguiling track. The doom heavy riffs continue for A Wound Unhealing with Soren sounding a lot like Siouxsie Sioux.
Another of the standout cuts is Ruin which is a duet for cello and piano and just waiting for a soundtrack appearance somewhere. The tune of Ruin is picked up for the ringing riff of The Penitent, which is another great vehicle for Soren’s voice. The album closes with maybe its best song – Between The Sea And Stars which is the kind of thing you can imagine Vikings raiding the coast to, such is the cinematic scope of the track.