The first point of reference musically I heard right away was Battlefields mixed with Withered’s first album, Memento Mori, as Empires mix a mid range form of heaving sludge and post rock but without the black metal element. Replace the black metal with some doomy melancholy and throw in some glacial sized riffs and grooves with a production that’s Sunlight Studios hum meets Sanford Parker (Rwake, Minsk, etc) buzz, and you get an instrumental album that never feels like a instrumental album. In fact, if this had vocals, it would have made it a fucking incredible album, but as it stands it’s a damn fine instrumental album in its own right.

Less epic and atmospheric and more concentrated and direct, Empires never drag on or draw out with songs that range from 6-9 minutes and rarely spend several minutes building or setting the mood (though “Our Mother” does have some short opening acoustics), but rather dive straight into thick, earthy riffs flocked with strains of doomy melody and layering. Look no further than the moody mid song peak of opener “Mourning the Arrival of the Sun”, the opening riff of “Sickly Brown Sky” or dense title track for that very slight Stockholm influence amid the cascades of expected Isis/Neurosis ebbs and crescendo’s (“Climbing Towards the Infinite”, “Patience in the Tide”, “Our Mother”).

Ultimately, Through Trial and Tribulation Comes Triumph, is the perfect blend of crushing beauty and eloquent density that makes an album I normally wouldn’t like into something rather special and different amid my usual fare of blastbeats, breakdowns and reeeee vocals.