Jonathan Hultén

Jonathan Hultén, a Swedish songwriter and performer, produces sparse, shadowy folk pieces whose haunting natural imagery recalls Nick Drake while echoing the introspective acoustic explorations of Sufjan Stevens’ earliest recordings. In addition to his solo work he plays lead guitar in the stylistically flexible, occult-focused death metal band Tribulation.

Hultén helped form Tribulation in the mid-2000s with vocalist/bassist Johannes Andersson, guitarist Adam Zaars, and drummer Jakob Johansson. Inspired by Autopsy and Morbid Angel, the quartet’s 2009 debut The Horror and its 2013 successor The Formulas of Death stayed rooted in classic Swedish death metal, blending icy atmospherics with ferocious, elemental riffs. Beginning with 2015’s The Children of Night, the group wove in strands of black metal, goth, and psychedelic occult rock; those textures remained prominent on Down Below (2018) and the live album Alive & Dead at Södra Teatern.

During those same years Hultén issued solo material that drew closer to 1960s British folk than to Tribulation’s punishing extreme-metal sound. The EP The Dark Night of the Soul appeared in 2017, followed in 2020 by his first full-length effort, the eerie and contemplative Chants from Another Place.