TRIBULATION
After Dark
Touring arenas with Ghost and Five Finger Death Punch, Sweden’s Tribulation were taking their death-tinged goth rock to the next level. Then their main songwriter quit
WORDS: ALEC CHILLINGWORTH • PICTURES: ESTER SEGARRA
Tribulation (left to right): Adam Zaars, Johannes Andersson, Oscar Leander, Joseph Tholl
Tribulation frontman Johannes Andersson was at his friend Joseph Tholl’s place. They were a few beers too deep and it was getting late, but nervous juju crackled through the air. Johannes knew what he had to do: he popped the question. “I didn’t want to be drunk… but I was. He kinda sensed what was going on, I guess, then it all just blurted out.”
Johannes didn’t ask Joseph to marry him. He asked him to join Tribulation. The band -with Johannes on bass and screaming like a dehydrated corpse, alongside guitarists Adam Zaars and Jonathan Hultén – formed in 2004, spending 10 years crawling from Sweden’s death metal underground until they got their dirt-flecked fingernails inside the Sony-owned label, Century Media. A switch from brutalism to lush, intrepid goth came with 2015’s The Children Of The Night, and during the cycle for their fourth record, 2018’s Down Below, they secured arena support slots with Ghost and, perhaps more head-scratchingly, a Moscow stadium show with Five Finger Death Punch.
“I actually watched from the side one night, and I scratched my head as well,” Johannes jokes. “They were our first-ever shows in Russia, so it was a no-brainer to take the deal and play in front of a lot of people instead of a small club. That’s always been the mission with Tribulation: make the live show bigger.”