On their sixth album, Swedish metal conjurers Tribulation allow the goth side of their personality to overshadow their death-metal roots. Sub Rosa in Aeternum sees vocalist/bassist Johannes Andersson mostly ditching his demonic growl for a clean, stentorian delivery akin to that of Sisters of Mercy’s Andrew Eldritch. “We wanted to do something new,” guitarist Adam Zaars tells Apple Music. “I was looking back at the previous three albums, and they’re each very much their own thing, but still similar enough for me to be craving something else. At first, we didn’t really know what that new thing would be.” Then Andersson, who hadn’t written a Tribulation song in nearly 20 years, presented his demo for what would become Sub Rosa’s closer, “Poison Pages”. “Obviously, the biggest change is the clean vocals,” Zaars says. “But we didn’t know if it was going to work. We’d been talking about it, but just using it as another instrument, like background harmonies or maybe a cool chorus on some song. When Johannes showed us ‘Poison Pages’, it felt liberating—and a lot of fun to explore new ground.” Sub Rosa is also the first album Tribulation wrote without guitarist Jonathan Hultén, who left the band before the release of 2021’s Where the Gloom Becomes Sound. As a result, new guitarist Joseph Tholl contributed quite a bit of material here. “The overall sound on the album absolutely has to do with Joseph being in the band,” Zaars says. “He wrote more songs than I did. With Joseph being another type of songwriter, another type of guitar player, it feels like the beginning of a new era.” Below, Zaars comments on each track. “The Unrelenting Choir” “Johannes wrote this song. He hasn’t written a song since our first demo, so this was something very new for everyone. And he did great, I would say. The original version was actually longer. Where it stops now, it went into this very cool Death SS-sounding part that we might use in the future. But we needed an intro, we felt, and Johannes did this one. It has a very ‘welcome to the show’ kind of feel. He got the idea for the bass at the beginning from some podcast he listens to. He won’t tell us which one.” “Tainted Skies” “That’s a Joseph song sounding very much like Tribulation, but in his own special way. This is one of the things that he brought to the table that really challenged us, daring us to try new things out. The lyrics are about reincarnation, I guess, but more specifically about the in-between stage—the bardo, as the Buddhists call it. Dying and being reborn has been a Tribulation theme since forever.” “Saturn Coming Down” “What made me write this song with that weird intro riff was, I wanted a guitar sound that was something different, where it almost feeds back, where it’s chaotic in a way. I don’t even remember how I did it because I’m far, far from being a sound gear guy. I want to be, but I have no interest. So, it was just sheer luck that I found this strange, almost surf-guitar sound that’s a little bit Dead Kennedys. The song is about Saturn, obviously, but when I write lyrics for Tribulation, it’s like a game of association. It’s Saturn from every possible direction, so people shouldn’t be looking for a coherent theme. Well, not too coherent at least.” “Hungry Waters” “This is another Joseph song. It’s not as Tribulation as ‘Tainted Skies’. The first time he showed this to me, I loved it, but I didn't think it could be on the album. I think that was before we decided to have a bunch of clean vocals on the album. That really was a catalyst for a few of these songs that would probably never have happened if we hadn't made that decision. It’s something fresh and new for us. The mid-section with the solos is very Tribulation, very Italian horror-soundtrack sounding. I was almost surprised by how well Joseph knew the sound. I’m still amazed by him writing this song.” “Drink the Love of God” “What the fuck is the love of God and how do you drink it? I know the answer, but I don’t want to be transparent. But I can say this: It’s the second song that was written specifically from that guitar sound from ‘Saturn Coming Down’. It’s very rare for me to write songs quickly, but I did for this. The only other one I can remember like that is ‘The Motherhood of God’ from The Children of the Night. It was our producer Tom Dalgety’s idea to add the key change after the solo. Being European, I think it’s a very schlager way of writing a song. But he was right, and I was wrong, I’m happy to say.” “Murder in Red” “This is probably my baby on the album. Most of it wasn’t very difficult to write, but it was difficult to finish. I made a demo of this that sounded almost industrial, but Johannes took it in a completely different direction with his vocals. That was very cool, almost like a Chris Isaak song to some extent. We were pushing our boundaries in a very satisfying way. Lyrically, I’ve been into gialli and violent Italian cinema since I was 13, when I bought Cannibal Holocaust on VHS. Since then, I’ve been hooked. Early Tribulation lyrics were oriented more towards zombie cannibal flicks, but this is more like earlier Argento and Mario Bava.” “Time & the Vivid Ore” “This is a song by Joseph that’s as much a part of something old as it is of something new. It almost sounds as though it could be from Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, but since it’s written by Joseph, it has its own distinct Sub Rosa flavour to it. It’s got one of the coolest solo sections on the album, displaying both mine and Joseph’s style of guitar playing and how they, in our opinion, complement each other. It’s also the only song with exclusively growling vocals!” “Reaping Song” “It’s one of the songs on the album that’s quite out there in comparison with our old material—sombre, melancholic, romantic, haunting and beautiful. It wasn’t supposed to be a Nick Cave homage to begin with, and I didn’t even think of it before Tom started talking about it. Then, of course, Joseph wanted it to be called ‘Reaping Song’, which is an obvious reference to Nick Cave. But I know it wasn’t, at first, written to be that—it just happened to sound somewhat like Nick Cave. The ‘Reaping Song’ is a song within a song, as that is what the protagonist of the story sings every year when the harvest season is upon us. Death meta.” “Poison Pages” “This is the song that really settled the new direction with the clean vocals. Johannes wrote it, and in the demo, he was singing. It wasn’t a decision that happened instantaneously, but after listening to it a lot, I think we all realised that this could be something to pursue. It’s a very goth-rock kind of song about The Name of the Rose, specifically the movie. Umberto Eco’s book, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s movie and the soundtrack by James Horner have all been a huge source of inspiration for the band for a very long time, but this is the first time we’re this explicit about it. There’s so much in there that is just a very good fit for Tribulation. The beast is among us!”