Tribulation - When The Gloom Becomes Sound

From the very instant that harrowing death knell begins to drone, it dawns on you: a sudden, morose realisation something lurks in the shadows, stalking, creeping, always there. For how long it has lingered in the twilight abyss you cannot be sure, but cloaked by the dimness of candlelight its gains you notice more and more, the whisper on the nape of your neck now a chill crawling down your spine like jagged, bony fingers. Stopping dead in your tracks, recalibrating and reorientating to no avail, 'tis not the panic setting in tripling your heart rate - 'tis the beckoning quiet, the breath of time standing still, as piercing yellow eyes stare into the back of your skull. This is When The Gloom Becomes Sound, retreating into the eternal dark with a snarl, dread all-encompassing, the deafening echo of blood pulsing forcing you to turn your head. Nothing there but the pitch-black swallowing you whole. You are now at Tribulation's mercy.

Where dream and shadow collide Tribulation are always there, perched upon the ledge in the entrance hall, waiting for the split second your guard is down, extending their velveteen touch unto your shoulders. Draped in songs of doom written in blood within the pages of the leatherbound, their domain has forever been one with the macabre, home to the spectres and creatures that have long plagued brooding imaginations, but unlike fellow countrymen their chambers grow in grandiosity with every new tome. Ruminating in a lust for the night, for your body upon the altar, When The Gloom Becomes Sound unfurls lavish requiems with morbid resplendence; noir incenses billow from the thurible Johannes Andersson swings at the procession's head, with incantations not chanted but sneered, as plumes of smoke haunt these chambers. Majestic are these laments, carried by grave winds howling down the vestibules, cradled by death's portentous embrace; vessels of oblivion, they ring like bells through the night, penetrating flesh with sombre foreboding as purveyed by meisters of the forlorn Adam Zaars and the departed Jonathan Hultén.

As wine spills into the goblet, its red hues reflect the visions of imminent woe and despair, transfixing all eyes whom dare to dwell in its intoxicating fountain for too long. Through its consumption the chapters coursing through this fifth opus bloom, addling the brain with a ravishing grimness long lost but now triumphantly reclaimed. As passages from 'Hour of the Wolf' and 'Daughter of the Djinn' rejoice their flickering dalliance with the calamitous eternal, the encircling crowd are lured into their dance and are lead further astray from purity. Their beauty slowly crumbling to ash, succumbing to the anguish of 'Dirge of a Dying Soul' and the immeasurable love of 'Inanna', souls become trapped to roam the halls to 'Lethe's haunting cadence. Godless, lost to all memory, the murmurs of those cast into the roaring fury of the 'Funeral Pyre' their only solace, thrashing within a sonorous shred until long after the bricks become but dust. Vivid invocations have never been forsaken by the spectacle in each volume for the invocations are the spectacle, where spells toiled for aeons to perfection are woven by an arcane sorcery, where devilish conjurations grasp tight until the final note chimes.

Tribulation revel in this baroque romanticism. They evoke the spirits of centuries past, channelling memory and menace through their fingers, their quills elegantly reminisce tales told by those who manipulated them long before. Their reach into the horrors bordering the natural and supernatural realm is vast enough to contemplate where the nightmares end and they begin. Where The Gloom Becomes Sound is the epitome of the illustrious, of incandescence, of becoming one with the spectral darkness; when crematory sounds rupture the silence with such eloquent solemnity, their dominion over you reigns absolute. Like moths to flame we are drawn to their power and let desire run rampant. Weak-willed are we as mere mortals to their allure which, just like wine, only gets stronger with age.