Monday 1 July 2013

Tribunal - Green/A\thouille (2013) | 75%

Guilty for being fucking weird


Their bandcamp is decorated with a whale in a boat wearing a multicolored cap and holding a baseball bat and a megaphone, a ombie puking and a rainbow saying ''pop métal'' .

While I'm not a fan of brutal death metal, I reckon that the genre successfully pushed the boundaries of extremity and that it has its appeal. Montreal's band Tribunal really likes to push the limits of good taste but they're doing it with originality and they're really fucking weird.

After a tongue in cheek introduction where the band members talk about their own project. The one minute and a half song is garnished by vulgar, obnoxious comments and a reggaeton/pop song playing in the background. I didn't really knew what to expect after this, I was awaiting really awful pornogrind but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked their sound. Maybe it's something in our beer but the grind and brutal death scene here is pretty strong. The band will play with Mesrine in July and I'm guessing it's gonna be insane.

Musically, the band play a form of death metal/grindcore with some hints of brutal death, deathcore and more extreme forms of grindcore. It's of course decorated by some experimentation such as the ''what the fuck is that ?'' moment on ''Suck la marde pour une tuerie'' (Suck the shit for a slaughter), it's a funk/ska/hip hop break with clean almost rapped vocals. It's eccentric and definitely not for everyone. The music is not so fast, there's lots of slower breaks reminding me of a band like Cattle Decapitation. Their lyrical themes are nowhere near the vegan or anti human themes of CD though. They're all sung in French and it's pretty fucking absurd, as weirdly written as local comic heroes Les Denis Drolets, they sing about dragons, ass cracks or whatever subject they found in their basement while drinking Colt 45 and watching hardcore Japanese uncensored porn. At least, they made me smile and that's something I can't say about all these goregrind bands talking of dismembering women and eating their livers. I suppose you can Google translate the lyrics and laugh with me (and them). They're an important part of the band's identity, irrevent and giving no fucks about anything else than pushing their complete madness down your throat, self-mockery is their friend. 

Even though the lyrics are pretty bad in a humorous way, the music is quite catchy. The singer, Laurent Bellemare is very competent (he joined up and comers death metallers Chthe'ilist as a live vocalist this year and he's in Impalement). The diversity of his growls is enjoyable, deep vocals that are quite understandable if you force your ears. The aforementioned clean spoken vocals are mostly done randomly by the other members.The instrumentation is quite fun, cool drums that are not your constant blastbeat engine, some cool bass licks and a well produced double guitar attack. While there's breakdowns, it's not in a jumpdafuk matter and it remains rooted in metal and not your usual core kiddie stuff. They can definitely build  nice songs and have the necessary talent to make them interesting. They could be even better if they want to, they have a shitload of potential, they probably should tighten their sound a little without changing their sound and themes too much.

Their image is fucked up, the album art is...I have no idea but their logo is quite awesome ! Weird as a Japanese band, Tribunal will be judged for what they are, a fun experimental death metal band singing about weird retarded stuff for their own amusement. Check it out if you're not yourself too seriously.

Check out their 2 other singles released in 2012, ''Fleur Bleue'' and ''À la prochaine fois'', both very good tracks at well and perhaps not as fucked up.

Tribunal's Facebook

No comments: