Tribunal - The Weight of Remembrance

One of my favorite ways to discover new music is to find and follow labels on Bandcamp. Inevitably, every Friday my inbox fills with notifications of new releases and sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. One such fateful Friday as I was sorting promotions and receipts and skimming various newsletters, my eye caught the moldering still life of Tribunal’s “The Weight of Remembrance” cover art. The simplicity felt lavish—a foreboding invitation down a dew-soaked crumbling passageway. Needless to say, I gave into my curiosity and started the album.

I was mesmerized immediately—the album art did not disappoint and served as the perfect preface to a dreaded descent into cavernous unknowns. The opening track, aptly titled “Initiation,” lets you know immediately what kind of soundscape you’ll be inhabiting for the next 48 minutes with an insistent death knell, atmospheric rain, and a hypnotic cello line, that slowly gets overtaken by dread-filled, crushing guitar riffs. We are squarely in blackened gothic doom territory, and to me, dear reader, it feels like home.

As I continued to listen I had to learn more about Tribunal and I was utterly shocked on two fronts—the band is a duo and this was their debut. What is not surprising is member Soren Mourne (what a name for a doom metal musician, extra points) identifies as a classically trained cellist while also contributing bass and vocals. The arrangements of classical and choral elements are masterful and act almost like an amphitheater to Etienne Flinn’s cinder block riffs—enhancing their envelopment of the senses but never to a distracting degree.

The album is incredibly cohesive and polished, seamlessly weaving black-velvety melodies, resigned growls, clean and haunting wails, and relentless scuzz that combine to deliver a lovely indulgence in forlorn heaviness. This record broods in the best possible way. “The Path,” the closing and perhaps my favorite track, lives up to its name—inviting you in with a beautiful, almost fairy-tale guitar melody (again exquisitely underscored by the cello as it builds). But as the track progresses, the sounds begin to close in around you, taking you on a claustrophobic journey into the labyrinthine depths of a monastery given up to the occult long ago.

I truly cannot praise this album enough and I hope my own gothic prose inspires you to experience what this album delivers. For fans of My Dying Bride, Pallbearer, and Khemmis, I highly suggest putting this record on, lighting as many candles as possible, and curling up with The Castle of Otranto or diving into your favorite dungeon crawler game and submitting to the dreadful catharsis that awaits.

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For more on Tribunal, visit the following links: Instagram | Spotify | Bandcamp | Facebook