“We have always striven to push our own boundaries and let the music change”: Black metal darlings Tribulation ditch corpse paint, go psych rock on new single Saturn Coming Down

Tribulation in 2024
(Image credit: Damón Zurawski)

Swedish extreme metal force Tribulation have released bold new single Saturn Comes Down, which sees the band ditch their black metal corpse paint and experiment with clean singing.

The single was released as a standalone track today (June 26) and is accompanied by a music video by Brendan McGowan and Damón Zurawski.

Watch the clip and hear the song below.

Guitarist Adam Zaars comments: “Saturn Coming Down is a song that creeps up on you and that hopefully gets thoroughly under your skin.

“It’s a taste of the new musical areas we’ve charted that’s taken us to places we’ve never ventured into before. An ode to a very old titan who constantly seems to be lurking behind our backs.”

He continues: “As many of you will know we have always striven to push our own musical boundaries and to let the music change and grow with us, and vice versa, and to carve out our own niche in metal in general and in our own musical landscape in particular.

Saturn Coming Down is the next stage in that ongoing process. It’s a song about Saturn and our various interpretations and imaginings of him throughout the millennia.

“Helping us with visualising this we had the pleasure of working with Brendan McGowan who really outdid himself with this video. We also had help from our friend Damón Zurawski who shot us here in Sweden.

“We couldn’t be happier with the result! Death is the way of the world!”

Tribulation released their latest EP, Hamartia, last year. It was their first collection of new music since the departure of founding guitarist Jonathan Hultén in 2021.

The band will tour North America with progressive metal stars Opeth in October. See the full list of dates below.

Opeth / Tribulation 2024 North American tour:

Oct 11: Milwaukee The Rave / Eagles Club, WI
Oct 12: Cleveland Agora Theater & Ballroom, OH
Oct 14: Toronto Queen Elizabeth Theatre, ON
Oct 15: Montréal L’Olympia, QC
Oct 16: Worcester Palladium, MA
Oct 18: Brooklyn Kings Theatre, NY
Oct 19: Pittsburgh Stage AE, PA
Oct 20: Washington, DC, Warner Theatre
Oct 22: Atlanta Tabernacle, GA
Oct 23: New Orleans Fillmore New Orleans, LA
Oct 24: Austin Emo’s Austin, TX
Oct 25: Dallas Majestic Theatre, TX
Oct 27: Denver Mission Ballroom, CO
Oct 29: Phoenix The Van Buren, AZ
Oct 30: Los Angeles YouTube Theater, CA
Oct 31: San Francisco The Warfield, CA

Matt Mills
Contributing Editor, Metal Hammer

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.