Live Review : Tribulation + Livgone @ Rebellion, Manchester on February 18th 2025

In this austere times, we are all looking for value for money in our gigging experience. This would explain the rise in popularity of the package tour as the allure of four bands we have heard of is more of a financial incentive than one. Swedish Goth-metal pioneers Tribulation, have gone for a different approach. For their rather extensive jaunt around Europe and the UK they have bought only one support act with them and in the shape of French/Polish/Swedish hybrids Livgone, it is not particularly a household name. Where they are providing bang for our bucks, is in the length of the set. At a meaty one hour forty minutes hour it towers above the usual hour maximum fair that we are served by bands of our ilk in venues such as Rebellion. It is a luxuriously elongated tour de force, allowing them to effortlessly wander across most of their recorded output (only 2009 debut “the Horror” doesn’t get a look in).

For their part Livgone are really interesting as opposed to being impeccably entertaining. They bring to mind shoegaze royalty the Cocteau Twins and Triphop inventors Portishead but given a metallic sheen. There is a real juxtaposition happening within their music. To describe this as being the archetypal quiet quiet loud would actually be rather lazy as it is much more nuanced and intricate in its make-up. Élise Aranguren is a brooding front woman, tickling her ivories in a detached and glacial manner. Her passages are minimal and stand-offish, with the silence between the notes doing most of the heavy lifting. Then her bandmates kick in and the air is filled with crunchy corrosive guitars. Her slight refrains are buried in this cacophony of reverberating sound and that very much seems to be the point.

It is all very stoic and aloof but you can't help be entranced by both their vision and drive. This is heavy music with a lot of thought put into it. Every note and every piece of sonic oscillation is playing an intrinsic part in building their maelstrom of noise. There is emotional weight but not in that usual rabble-rousing pit-baiting sort of way. Instead, its power is derived from its extremity and its contrasting components. Intriguing and fascinating in its unique oddness. 

Tribulation are going big this evening. As mentioned the set length is almost double what we would expect within the confines of this venue but the production values and the sheer scale and ambition of the show but also of XXL proportions. In many ways they provide an infinite amount of shows within a show. Rather than take us on a scattergun trip around their highly impressive back catalogue, They choose to step back in time in a series of regimented packages, displaying two or even three songs from a particular album at a time (think Taylor Swift’s Eras tour but with added vampiric tendencies). 

They start very much in the present day when opening salvo from last year's really rather impressive “Sub Rosa In Æternum”, a Gothic masterpiece that out sister the mercy of the Sisters of Mercy. It provided the crowning moment of their trans-modification from a metal act into a goth band and Johannes Andersson’s beautifully sculpted clean vocals almost jar against the growls his ushers further during the rest of the set. This is widescreen stadium goth, full of immaculately contoured riffs and shape-pulling set-pieces.

We then hurtle back to 2018 for a couple from “Down Below” and the darkness and claustrophobia start to creep in. There is still lots of opulent Gothic traits on offer but the sound is denser and heavier and those crackling growls are in full in effect. Early doors Johannes begs forgiveness for potentially dodgy vocals due to the onset of a cold, but he doesn’t drop a stitch the whole evening. In fact he is a remarkable frontperson, effortlessly entertaining and engaging with just the right amount of reservation to feel unworldly and unattainable.

The furthest we are dragged into the primal soup of the past is with a section from 2013’s “The Formulas of Death”. This displays Tribulation at their most metallic. They stomp around the stage revelling in the return to their past sound. Stand in guitarist Tobias Alpadie particularly shines as he dispenses careering riff after careering riff. Pumps of smoke are shot into the air and there is plenty of posturing on the vanity boxes at the lip of the stage. As stated, this is far beyond the production values usually afforded at Rebellion and it proves to be ludicrously enjoyable.

We start a slow canter towards the present with soul stop-offs at “The Children of The Night” and 2021’s extraordinary “Where the Gloom Becomes Sound” but then we are returned to the present and the clean singing with a triumphant of nuggets from the new album. ‘Saturn Coming Down’ is particularly magnificent. An anthemic joy that gets the whole room singing. If the hardcore followers upfront resent the band's obvious evolution in sound then they don’t show it as they bellow along with ecstatic ecstasy.

We are now clocking up the minutes, but with a glint in his eye Johannes introduces final track ‘Lacrimosa’ with the promise that if we are good there will be even more!!! He keeps his promise as they return for a final stand of ‘Strange Gateways Beckon’. Even more shapes are pulled and there is even more cavorting between the band members as Johannes and Adam Zarrs entwine. It is grandiose, lavishly over the top and just delectably enjoyable. Tribulation may purport to tread in dominion of the undead but they do so in a joyous and Technicolor manner. For all the goth sensibilities on show, tonight is a riot of pulsating pleasure and vaudeville entertainment. Don’t let the dour faces and corpse paint fool you, Tribulation live are happiness incarnate. If they truly are children of the night, then they prove fun isn’t just for the living.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Tribulation + Livgone