Page 30 - Metal Hammer Issue 334 - UK (May 2020)
P. 30
Jonathan Hultén:
change is good
NEW NOISE
Tribulation’s talismanic guitarist is going it alone
– and the results may just surprise you
WORDS: JOE DALY
FOLLOWING UP HIS mesmerising pictures that appeared to my inner eye
2017 EP, The Dark Night Of The Soul, were all about trees and mountains
Tribulation guitarist Jonathan Hultén and the sea.”
returns with his full-length solo debut, With the exception of drums on
Chants From Another Place. An utterly one song, Jonathan composed and
transfixing voyage through dreamy performed the entire album himself. new and saying goodbye to the old.
acoustic landscapes, Chants… sees the Yet Chants… is anything but one of It can have a very profound effect on
Grammy-winning Swede step broadly those stodgy and self-indulgent our lives.”
away from the punishing frays of black singer/songwriter affairs; rather, Chants… is ultimately an affirmative
and death metal into something far these tracks ebb and flow with lush, collection of meditations that find
more introspective. Rooted in the old spectral harmonies and delicate hope in the idea of impermanence.
folk and religious choral traditions, the IN SHORT fingerstyle melodies that recall the “Change is actually quite vitalising
12 compositions articulate Jonathan’s SOUNDS LIKE: baroque British folk tradition of the and energising if you can accept it,
artistic and spiritual evolution, Pillowy acoustic late-60s, sprinkled with delicate flecks but it can be very uncomfortable
beginning many years ago. “My mother dreamscapes for of dreampop. sometimes. And scary.”
used to be a choir leader,” he explains. strolling through Thematically, silvery metaphors of
“She sang in a choir and played in an ancient forest death, rebirth and the cycle of life THE CONTRAST BETWEEN his
churches, in concerts and whatnot. FOR FANS OF: invest the album with a real sense of solo compositions and his work in
Basically, for a while, I was also Baroness, heaviness that permeates every note. Tribulation is dramatic, and yet
a church musician. She’s always played Nic Nassuet, “This current society isn’t staring into Jonathan believes that the two forms
Jeff Buckley
those songs at home.” the face of death at all. Ha ha!” he says. inhabit a symbiotic relationship. “I’ve
Breathtakingly fragile, tracks like LISTEN TO: “It seems as if we’re more obsessed noticed that they tend to borrow things
A Dance In The Road, Deep Night and Where Devils Weep with staying as young as possible. from each other, these personas that
The Mountain tap into a vibrant cosmic I guess that’s the opposite of embracing I explore within myself. It just comes
realm, pitched just beyond the five ageing and by extension, embracing naturally. When I explore this way
senses. Summoning nature as his death. The eras of a person’s life – the of performing, like certain hand
muse, these songs build a powerful milestones, or the major events that movements, they start coming into the
psychic bridge into that otherworldly determine where you’re going – are Tribulation performance quite naturally.
state of being. “It feels like there’s saying goodbye to an old way of being. So the line is blurry. The Tribulation
something mystical about it that’s Let’s say you’re not in school anymore thing has been going on for a long time;
drawing me in,” he says. “And I imbue and you’re about to enter the world of like 10 years, I guess. But [my solo work]
nature with that feeling, as if it was being an adult. Or you are turning 30, is just two or three years old, so we’ll
nature that inspired those songs, for example, or maybe you’re starting see where that ends. It could end up in
once upon a time. That’s what the a new job or you’re moving somewhere a really strange or wacky place. I don’t
album’s about as well. In the end, the else. It’s all about entering something know. Let’s hope so! Ha ha ha!”
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