Tribunala duo from Vancouver, introduce themselves on their debut album The Weight of Remembrance promising alchemist team harmonizing as dual ambitions of the dark arts.
One side of the coin, which homogenizes its contrasts in an amazingly organic way, is the Goth-affine witch-doom of the classically trained Soren Morne (bass / cello / vocals), who revels in theatrical clear singing through an occult pathos and the string instrument impressively into the well-formed song-serving Weaves compositions – always so reserved and unobtrusive, but subversively essential before the ponderous baroque Without Answer the cello still shines on display without overpowering the almost symphonic-chamber music ambience.
The other side of synergy Tribunal feeds Etienne Flinn (guitar / vocals) with his groaning-snarling, guttural nagging and growling Death Doom, which Markov Soroka (mix, master) perhaps caught a bit too swampy in the morass – but as a complementary element to the gracefully striding female After a short period of getting used to it, the voice fits perfectly.
In general, the band’s idiosyncratic sound needs somewhere between the vague associations My Dying Bride, Devil‘s Blood, Blood Ceremony, Candlemass or Fvneral Fvkk – a little time to fully develop his charms and to show the accomplished power of his well-rounded songwriting – so not only interesting to act, but also conclusive to function.
Because what can appear half-baked at first contact, stylistically not quite mature and compositionally meandering, soon leaves these impressions behind to a certain extent and ultimately only has to put up with the one serious reproach that The Weight of Remembrance viewed as a whole is no more than the sum of its individual song parts; the debut as a whole remains rather a patchwork that does not fully exhaust its potential.
Initiation awakens picturesquely and traditionally to the midnight glockenspiel, stomps through fie heaviness with the archaic drums of Julia Gaeman (whose almost primitive, but at the same time smart and dynamic-supporting playing fits wonderfully with the balanced aesthetics of the band) and heroically secondary guitar figures and is ethereal and ethereal almost eight minutes ended almost too abruptly.
Of Creeping Moss and Crumbled Stone meanwhile finds an idiosyncratic beauty and graceful grandeur in damp cave systems, where the band drifts elegiacly Apathy’s Keep (with optional drumming by Magdalena Wienski) crisper, more compact and closer together. The melancholic piano interlude Claine Lamb works very atmospherically as an intermediate piece in the rain, before the mystically swelling standard Without Answers is rather underwhelming and only the more than twelve minutes of The Path once more patiently measuring the panorama that the sound world of The Weight of Remembrance deserved – without measuring lengths over an entertaining 47 minutes, but the immense talent test of Tribunal to underline.
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