Tribune – Elder Lore / The Dark Arts (Corpse Corrosion Music, 20 March 2012)

I know I keep going on about that map of band locations that I put together last week, but I think it’s really fun to play with. Maybe I’m the only one that really cares; maybe I’m just a major dork. Whatever. But check it out: you can do cool stuff like zoom in on Burnaby, Canada — right next to Vancouver, near the Pacific coast and just above the border with Washington state in the northwestern United States. Then you can change to a satellite view or even a topographic map, if you want to. Here you can see that the city, which is home to the band Tribune^*, is surrounded by a few lakes, and most of the land seems to be pretty close to sea level anyway. From that I would surmise that there just might be a good bit of swamps or marshlands near that area.

Of course, I could have made the same assumption just by listening to their recently-released double-EP Elder Lore / The Dark Arts. The blend of riffs and vocals they incorporate into their particular version of death metal might give you the impression that they come from the same backwater bayou country as Down or Crowbar, rather than the frozen tundra of British Columbia. But, hometown notwithstanding, these guys have put together a combination of styles that I’ve decided to call stoner/death metal. You just need to check it out to see what I mean.
 
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^* By the way — I don’t know if it’s a Canadian thing or what, but I’ve learned that the band’s name is pronounced differently than I originally thought. It’s actually “TRY-bune” (as in “tribunal”), not “TRIB-une” (like ”tribute”).
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