Artist: Great Tribulation
Country: Spain / USA
Label: Profaner Records
Formats: Cassette Tape
Year: 2025
After the 1-track demo/promo from early January this year, the Spanish/American trio that together makes up Great Tribulation is back already with their debut album. A full-length just clocking over half an hour, these guys push you to your limits with their menacing Black- and Death Metal blend. Those who heard ‘Transient Lattice’, the song presented as ‘Promo MMXXV’ know what to expect, as this specific song is also the opener for ‘Latter Realities’.
These three blokes definitely know what they’re doing. All three of them are deeply invested into the Extreme Metal’s most violent underground circles. Their experience in bands such as Warslaughter, Vastago, Red Right Hand Of Plague and Thirsting Ampoule as well as running respectable labels such as Elf Eggs, Profaner Records and Black Noise Committee definitely shows off in the music on this first full-length album.
While the blending of Black Metal and Death Metal is something that you can hear on a daily basis, these guys surely put something different to the table when compared to what is usually filed under this amalgam. It definitely has nothing to do with Belphegor or Behemoth, but while it feels closer to bands like Beherit and Proclamation, it ain’t that either. Great Tribulation combines the propulsive and often monotonous war-like drums with a nice wall of piercing guitars and utterly bellowing vocals. Yet, it is all poured into a mold of a truly oppressing doom-laden production.
The contrast between the chaotic and profoundly barbaric nature of the music on the one hand and the suffocating and overpowering atmosphere gives the music a true unsettling feeling. Something that clearly sets Great Tribulation apart from the majority of their peers. Most of these musician’s other bands are equally impressive, all built upon the same sort of musical corner stones, they all sound remarkably different. A true testament of visionary musicianship and a good sense for song writing, even within the rather narrow framework of the War/Bestial-like Black/Death Metal genre.
