The Children of the Night

A follow up album will always be measured by the standards set on the previous one that is a fact, high expectations can kill an album release, marketing involved, the release date, the promotion, etc.

Tribulation set new standards in death metal with their highly acclaimed “The Formulas Of Death” and right after its release all the fans and critics alike popped the question, what would they do to make a better record ?. After 30 spins I am writing this review.

“The Children Of The Night” is not your average record coming from a band trying to reinvent the wheel, as it wasn't crafted about experimentation and progression. Lots of people (including me) might think this 3rd full length was going to be a hard listen, going deeper into the depths of what the band created with “The Formulas Of Death” and might polish the trademark sound created with it. Well… guess what? That is not happening here.

As the album begins it’s almost impossible not to compare the intro to what Ghost (Ghost BC) have done in the past, with a Hammond organ giving the creepy atmosphere for the entire record. Then the starting riff of the second track begins and the whole picture is unveiled, my hope for a total metal album was gone, I knew right there that this was going to be a rock album with an obscure traditional heavy metal approach. The guitars sound like classic Jimmy Page overdrive sound with a bit more bottom end reminiscent to NWOBHM distortion, the drums are as rock basic as possible, no fast parts, no double bass drum kick and a 70s, 80s edge to it, specially the snare and cymbals. Bass guitar is pretty much audible every moment which gives a sense of clarity and open sound to the record.

Now the most critical side of “The Children of the Night” apart from what was mentioned before, are 3 things: Songwriting, Structures, Keyboards. The songwriting approach is weird, parting from 2-3 main riffs per song and just play around those to finish the song. The structures were also affected, going from intro, verse, chorus, verse, bridge and end, to an even more basic structure in a couple of songs. And now the risky dice played in this record, the keyboards (to me) make this record lose its focus on the main idea, as it gives more filler time than flow over the songs, abusing of its sound was not the right idea on my perspective as instead of making the band sound mature, it could made the band sound a bit pretentious. After listening to the first 2 songs I pretty much knew 90% of how the record will end up sounding in general as they keep the same mood and vibe through the entire album.

But not everything is bad about “The Children Of The Night”, actually I can say this is a very enjoyable, fun and easy listening record, you don’t need to pay lots of attention to what is going on, you just put the record in the player and let the flow takes you to a mix of 70s, 80s and 90s rock with heavy metal and even some post rock and post punk sounds, this is the kind of record you can listen every time, every day and won’t put you to think much about if it’s good or not, just make you play the air guitar like trying to mimic Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page and the early guitar gods. If it wasn’t for Johannes Andersson vocal delivery this album could have been aimed to a different market.

The artwork is magnificent, but not original (again), as it’s some sort of inverted copy of the cover from a classic horror movie of 1915, however it displays the music contained pretty well, the layout is awesome, very dark and classy. The length of the album might be a problem for some people wanting to listen to a 30-40 minutes album, as it clocks over 55 minutes for the regular edition and over 60 minutes in the special editions making it an album hard to listen completely again after you listen to it a few times and maybe just selecting your favorite songs for the casual listen session.

I must say that even when this album is an easy ride record, it’s a joyful ride and bring back feelings that other bands don’t deliver anymore, I went ahead and revisited some Led Zeppelin, Rush, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath records, and now I think of them as timeless pieces of art due to their catchy and easy approach, and I think Tribulation aimed for it and succeeded, creating a timeless record were rock meets early metal, no matter if you like Iron Maiden, AC/DC or Van Halen everyone is invited to rock the hell out of it and have a good time.
Old school death metal fans will criticize the path Tribulation took this time, and will probably say they sellout by signing to a bigger label and putting out an album like this, however this is not about evolution, sometimes we just need simple stuff to make us remember where we come from, how do we end up listening to rock music and why we love it so much.

Is “The Children of the Night” a contender to album of the year? Well my friends, I must say it will sure make it into tons of end of the year lists, and I will feel very disappointed about the entire human race if not. If there is an album you need to buy this year, I would say go grab this one.