“Whatever you are writing, it always has a certain portion of your psyche, fears and love in it. Everything that is you.“
After our pre-feature with Adam Zaars in which he revealed the first details of Tribulation‘s upcoming album ‘Down Below’, we are back with an in-depth conversation about the band’s fourth masterpiece – this time we were having a chat with guitarist Jonathan Hultén who had just returned from his European solo tour (no sleep for the wicked!).
In this interview, he unveils how the lyrics on the new full-length release were mostly inspired by the microcosms within themselves but still allow drawing parallels to the current state of the world. While explaining the songwriting process, he describes how he determines whether a song is suited for the death metal context of Tribulation or rather gets stored in his little archive of tracks that he writes for his acoustic solo album. On the example of “Nightbound”, he clarifies how each song needs to go through a certain process to become a typical band track and furthermore discusses the deeper meaning behind the artwork that he painted, showing a fierce grotesque and hidden Madonna that are watching over the shadows of Stockholm.
He speaks about the typical worries of a performer and how his music allowed him to overcome certain fears and become aware of unconscious dreams, and explains how Tribulation constantly seek to avoid cheesiness, even though they often pick up classical topics from the gothic genre.
Moreover, he discusses his experiments with make-up, reveals whether he will create another music video for the band in the close future, and how he first picked up a guitar at the age of 10, and finishes with explaining which art movements had the biggest impact on him.
‘Down Below’ will be released on January 26th through Century Media and you can catch the band on tour with Arch Enemy and Insomnium in 2018!
